Alexander Melville Bell

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Alexander Melville Bell

1 March 1819
Born
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died 7 August 1905 (aged 86)
Rock Creek Cemetery
Resting place
Washington, D.C.
Education University of Edinburgh
Occupation Teacher, lecturer, scholar
Employer various universities
Spouse(s) Eliza Symonds
Melville James Bell (1845–70)
Children Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922)
Edward Charles Bell (1848–67)
Alexander Bell (1790–1865)
Parent(s)
Elizabeth Colville (d. 1856)

Alexander Melville Bell (1 March 1819 – 7 August 1905)[1] was a teacher and researcher
of physiological phonetics and was the author of numerous works on orthoepy and
elocution.

Additionally he was also the creator of Visible Speech which was used to help the deaf
learn to talk, and was the father of Alexander Graham Bell.[2]
Contents
 1 Biography
 2 Visible Speech
 3 Other contributions to the education of the deaf
 4 Death and tributes
 5 Publications
 6 Notes
 7 References
 8 Further reading
 9 External links

Biography
Alexander Melville Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and studied under and became
the principal assistant of his father, Alexander Bell (1790–1865),[3] an authority on
phonetics and speech disorders. From 1843 to 1865 he lectured on speech elocution at the
University of Edinburgh, and from 1865 to 1870 at the University of London.[4] Melville
married Eliza Grace Symonds (d. Georgetown, Washington, D.C., 5 January 1897),[5] the
only daughter of a British naval surgeon.

In 1868, and again in 1870 and 1871, Melville lectured at the Lowell Institute in Boston,
Massachusetts after having moved to Canada. In 1870 he became a lecturer on philology at
Queen's College, Kingston, Ontario; and in 1881 he moved to Washington, D.C. at the
suggestion of his son Graham, where he devoted himself to the education of the deaf by the
use of Visible Speech in which the alphabetical characters of his linguistic invention were
representative graphic diagrams for the various positions and motions of the lips, tongue,
mouth, etc., as well as other methods of orthoepy.[4]

Prior to departing Scotland for Canada Melville Bell had published at least 17 works on
proper speech, vocal physiology, stenography and other works. Besides instructing at
Queens College he also lectured in Boston, Montreal, Toronto, London, and other
universities including a series of 12 lectures at Boston's Lowell Institute.[6] When the Duke
and Duchess of Cornwall (later King George V and Queen Mary) called on Brantford for a
visit, Melville was asked to greet the dignitaries at the public event. He became a Fellow of
the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as obtaining memberships in other
societies.[6]

Alexander Melville Bell was married twice, first to Eliza Grace Symonds in 1844 with
whom he had three children, and then to Harriet G. Shibley.[6][3]

Further information: Bell Homestead National Historic Site

Visible Speech
In 1864 Melville published his first works on Visible Speech, to help the deaf both learn
and improve upon their aural speech (since the profoundly deaf could themselves not hear
their own aural pronunciations).[7] To promote the language, Bell created two written short
forms using his system of 29 modifiers and tones, 52 consonants, 36 vowels and a dozen
diphthongs:[8] World English, which was similar to the International Phonetic Alphabet,
and also Line Writing, used as a shorthand form for stenographers.[9]

Melville's works on Visible Speech became highly notable, and were described by Édouard
Séguin as being "...a greater invention than the telephone of his son, Alexander Graham
Bell".[9] Melville saw numerous applications for his invention, including its worldwide use
as a universal language. However, although heavily promoted at the Second International
Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, Italy in 1880, after a period of a dozen years
or so in which it was applied to the education of the deaf, Visible Speech was found to be
more cumbersome, and thus a hindrance, to the teaching of speech to the deaf compared to
other methods,[10] and eventually faded from use.

Other contributions to the education of the deaf

In 1887, his son, Alexander Graham Bell, sold off the intellectual assets owned by the
Volta Laboratory Association. Graham used the considerable profits from the sale of his
shares to found the Volta Bureau as an instrument "for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge relating to the deaf".[11] Graham's scientific and statistical research work on
deafness became so large that within the period of a few years his documentation engulfed
an entire room of the Volta Laboratory in Melville's backyard carriage house. Due to the
limited space available at the carriage house, and with the assistance of Melville who
contributed US$15,000 (approximately $410,000 in today's dollars),[12] Graham had his
new Volta Bureau building constructed close by in 1893.

Death and tributes

Hubbard Bell Grossman Pillot Memorial

Melville Bell died at age 86 in 1905 due to pneumonia after an operation for diabetes,[2] and
was interred in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Cemetery adjacent to the Hubbard • Bell •
Grossman • Pillot Memorial, alongside his wife and other members of the Bell and
Grosvenor families.

The Bell House at Colonial Beach, Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1987.[13]

The voice of Bell, citing a sentence from Hamlet, can be heard at the Smithsonian
Institution, as extracted from an 1881 graphophone recording.[14]

Publications
The following are some of the more prominent of the 93 publications authored or co-
authored by Melville Bell:[9][15]

 Steno-Phonography (1852)
 Letters and Sounds (1858)
 The Standard Elocutionist (1860, and nearly 200 other editions), including a
viewable 1878 edition (below) published by William Mullan & Son, properly cited
as:
o David Charles Bell, Alexander Melville Bell. Bell's Standard Elocutionist:
Principles And Exercises, W. Mullan, London, 1878.
 Principles of Speech and Dictionary of Sounds (1863)
 Visible Speech: The Science of Universal Alphabetics (1867)
 Sounds and their Relations (1881)
 Lectures on Phonetics (1885)
 A Popular Manual of Visible Speech and Vocal Physiology (1889)
 World English: the Universal Language (1888)
 The Science of Speech (1897)
 The Fundamentals of Elocution (1899)

Notes
1.

 "The Bell Family". bellhomestead.ca. Retrieved 27 September 2013.

  "Alexander M. Bell Dead. Father of Prof. A. G. Bell Developed Sign Language for
Mutes." The New York Times. 8 August 1905. Retrieved 21 July 2007.
  Ancestry.com Historical Person Overview: Alexander Melville Bell. Retrieved May
2017
  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in
the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bell, Alexander Melville". Encyclopædia
Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 684. This in turn cites John Hitz,
Alexander Melville Bell (Washington, 1906).
  Bruce 1990, p. 420.
  Whitaker, A.J. "Bell Telephone Memorial", City of Brantford/Hurley Printing,
Brantford, Ontario, 1944. PDF.
  Winzer 1993, pg.192
  Winzer 1993, pg.193
  Winzer 1993, pg.194
  Winzer 1993, pg.195–203
  Bruce 1990, pp.412–413
  Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Community Development Project. "Consumer
Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved January 2,
2018.
  National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System".
National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  "The Volta Laboratory and the Smithsonian – Hear My Voice, Albert H. Small
Documents Gallery, Smithsonian's National Museum of American History". Retrieved 15
November 2015.

15.  Chisholm 1911.

References
 Bruce, Robert V. Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Ithaca, New
York: Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8014-9691-8.
 Alexander Graham Bell, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
 Winzer, Margret A. The History Of Special Education: From Isolation To
Integration, Gallaudet University Press, 1993, ISBN 1-56368-018-1, ISBN 978-1-
56368-018-2.

Further reading
 Curry, Samuel Silas. Alexander Melville Bell: Some Memories, With Fragments
From A Pupil's Note-Book, School of Expression, 1906.
 Patten, William; Bell, Alexander Melville. Pioneering the Telephone in Canada,
Montreal: William Patten, 1926.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alexander Melville Bell.

 Biography portal

 "Bell, Alexander Melville". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.

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 v
 t
 e

Alexander Graham Bell

 Alexander Graham Bell
Life  Alexander Melville Bell
and  Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia
family  Bell House (Virginia)
 Bras d'Or Lake
 Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell
 Chichester Bell
 David Fairchild
 Graham Fairchild
 Edwin S. Grosvenor
 Gardiner Greene Hubbard
 Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor
 Gilbert Melville Grosvenor
 Hubbard Bell Grossman Pillot Memorial
 Kendall Myers
 Mabel Gardiner Hubbard
 Mabel H. Grosvenor
 Melville Bell Grosvenor
 Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf