With help from Bell, oralism caught on and became the primary method through which deaf children were taught, well into the 20 th century. Bell further developed his father’s work and lectured around the country, promoting his ideas. Visible Speech uses symbols to represent different sounds that are made when a person speaks. In her book, The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness, Katie Booth explores how this idea shaped Bell’s life, as well as his most famous invention.Īlexander Graham Bell initially used Visible Speech, a method developed by his father, Alexander Melville Bell, to teach deaf people, including Helen Keller and his future wife Mabel. Instead, Alexander Graham Bell was devoted to the idea of oralism – teaching the deaf to speak using lip-reading and verbal speech, as opposed to sign language. At least, his passion wasn’t for the telephone. When we think of an inventor, we often think of someone with a singular passion for whatever it is that they’re working on. Most people know Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but there is so much more to that story. In our new video series, Ingenious, Susannah Carroll and Trace Dominguez look at the history of many inventions that have changed our world – including the telephone.

Telephone inventor