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Alexander Melville Bell (1 March 18197 August 1905) 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 Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and T ...
.


Biography

Alexander Melville Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and studied under and became the principal assistant of his father, Alexander Bell (b. 3 March 1790, Fife, Scotland d. 23 April 1865, St. Pancras, North London),Ancestry.com Historical Person Overview: Alexander Melville Bell
Retrieved May 2017
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. This in turn cites John Hitz, ''Alexander Melville Bell'' (Washington, 1906). Melville married Eliza Grace Symonds (b. 21 September 1809, Alverstock, Hampshire d. Georgetown, Washington, D.C., 5 January 1897), the only daughter of a British
naval surgeon A naval surgeon, or less commonly ship's doctor, is the person responsible for the health of the ship's company aboard a warship. The term appears often in reference to Royal Navy's medical personnel during the Age of Sail. Ancient uses Speciali ...
. In 1868, and again in 1870 and 1871, Melville lectured at the Lowell Institute in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most p ...
, 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. 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.Whitaker, A.J.
"Bell Telephone Memorial"
', City of Brantford/Hurley Printing, Brantford, Ontario, 1944. PDF.
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 The Royal Scottish Society of Arts is a learned society in Scotland, dedicated to the study of science and technology. It was founded as The Society for the Encouragement of the Useful Arts in Scotland by Sir David Brewster in 1821 and dedicated ...
, and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...
, as well as obtaining memberships in other societies. 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.


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). 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
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
s: World English, which was similar to the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
, and also Line Writing, used as a shorthand form for stenographers.Winzer 1993, pg.194 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 Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and T ...
". 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, 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 The Volta Laboratory (also known as the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory, the Bell Carriage House and the Bell Laboratory) and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. by Alexander Graham Bell.(19/20th-century scientist and ...
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".Bruce 1990, pp.412–413 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 The Volta Laboratory (also known as the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory, the Bell Carriage House and the Bell Laboratory) and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. by Alexander Graham Bell.(19/20th-century scientist and ...
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 $ in today's dollars), Graham had his new Volta Bureau building constructed close by in 1893.


Death and tributes

Melville Bell died at age 86 in 1905 due to pneumonia after an operation for diabetes, 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 The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
in 1987. The voice of Bell, citing a sentence from ''
Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'', can be heard at the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Found ...
, as extracted from an 1881 graphophone recording.


Publications

The following are some of the more prominent of the 93 publications authored or co-authored by Melville Bell:Winzer 1993, pg.194 * ''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: ** 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


References

* Bruce, Robert V
''Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude''
Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990. .
Alexander Graham Bell
''
Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'', 2010. Retrieved 24 May 2010. * Winzer, Margret A
''The History Of Special Education: From Isolation To Integration''
Gallaudet University Press, 1993, , .


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

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Alexander Melville 1819 births 1905 deaths Academics of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of London Alexander Graham Bell Queen's University at Kingston faculty Scottish expatriates in the United States Academics from Edinburgh Creators of writing systems Scottish philologists Phoneticians Burials at Rock Creek Cemetery People from Colonial Beach, Virginia Elocutionists