In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted U.S. patent 174,465 for the telephone. Bell's developments in telephony, however, were a consequence of his research and devotion to the hearing impaired.

"Alec" Bell (as he was known to family and close friends) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Eliza Grace Symonds Bell and Alexander Melville Bell on March 3, 1847. Bell's paternal grandfather, also named Alexander, had worked as an elocution teacher and had published several books, including The Practical Elocutionist (1834), Stammering and Other Impediments of Speech (1836), and A New Elucidation of the Principles of Speech and Elocution (1849). Bell's father continued the family's work in this area, and the efforts of Bell and his father to teach speech to the hearing impaired was greatly influenced by the fact that Bell's mother was deaf.

In London in 1863, Bell and his father met with Charles Wheatstone, who had...