Alexander Graham Bell Calls Chicago from New York. Alexander Graham Bell is synonymous with telephone. But that wasn’t his only invention. He considered his most important creation to be the photophone — a device that transmitted sound on a beam of light. Although the photophone never met with the success that Bell hoped for, it became one of the key elements in the invention of fiber optics, which today transport over 80 percent of the world’s telecommunications. Bell, born in 1847, always considered himself first a teacher of the deaf; but his other interests made him an early leader of the National Geographic Society, and his inventions ranged from a prototype of the iron lung to methods of removing salt from sea water. His work with tetrahedrons led to the creation of the hydrofoil; in 1919, a hydrofoil he built with Casey Baldwin set a world water-speed record that was not broken until 1963. Alexander Graham Bell died on August 2, 1922, at his summer home on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. People throughout North America were urged to refrain from making phone calls during his burial so that telephones would remain silent as a tribute. Bell died of pernicious anemia at the age of 75, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, located on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island near the village of Baddeck. He was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain overlooking Bras d’Or Lake. He was survived by his wife and two of their four children.
