Introduction
A great invention was born out of love and not profit by Alexander Graham Bell.
Bell’s wife, Mabel Hubbard Bell, lost her hearing at the age of five due to scarlet fever. Mabel didn’t let that define her. Educated at the best schools available to deaf students she became fluent in lip reading and speaking. Credit goes to her father’s insistence on oral education, and later to the personal tutoring of young Alexander Graham Bell.
Harriet B. Rogers and Mary S. Byam founded the Chelmsford School for the Deaf in 1867. The school moved to Northampton Massachusetts a year later and became the Clarke School for the Deaf. Mabel, Harriet, and Mary went with it.
The Telephone
Mabel met Alexander when he was her teacher at the Clarke School in Northampton. Their relationship blossomed from student and tutor into something more. They married in 1877. Mabel’s encouragement, patience, and financial support (through her family) was instrumental in helping Bell secure the patent for the telephone. This changed global communication forever.
“It is claimed that from Bell’s experiments in visualizing the vibrations of speech in order to enable deaf children to read speech from graphic inflections and modulations of the speaker’s words, that the invention of the telephone resulted.” (1)
Though overshadowed by her husband’s fame, Mabel Hubbard Bell was never just “the wife of the inventor.” As a businesswoman, she managed much of the Bell family’s finances. She even played a quiet role in the early operations of the Bell Telephone Company. She was a philanthropist, supporting education, women’s rights, and scientific research.
Mabel Hubbard Bell wasn’t just part of history. She helped make it. And her connection to Chelmsford is a piece of that legacy worth remembering.
Conclusion
All telephones in North America went silent for 1 minute in tribute when Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922. Try that today…
References:
(1) Website, Chelmsford Historical Commission, Clarke School Monument
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