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 Orthoepy is the study of pronunciation of a particular language, within a specific oral tradition. The term is from the Greek , from () and (). The antonym is '' cacoepy'' "bad or wrong pronunciation". The pronunciation of the word ''orthoep ...

and

elocution Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone as well as the idea and practice of effective speech and its forms. It stems from the idea that while communication is symbolic, sounds are final and compel ...

. 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 Canadian Americans, Canadian-American inventor, scientist, and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He als ...

Biography

Alexander Melville Bell was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, 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 North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames and the City of London. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshi ...

),Ancestry.com Historical Person Overview: Alexander Melville Bell
Retrieved May 2017 an authority on

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

and speech disorders. From 1843 to 1865 he lectured on speech

at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

, and from 1865 to 1870 at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

. This in turn cites John Hitz, ''Alexander Melville Bell'' (Washington, 1906). Melville married Eliza Grace Symonds (b. 21 September 1809, Alverstock,

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

d. Georgetown, Washington, D.C., US 5 January 1897), the only daughter of a British naval surgeon. In 1868, and again in 1870 and 1871, Melville lectured at the

Lowell Institute The Lowell Institute is a United States educational foundation located in Boston, Massachusetts, providing both free public lectures, and also advanced lectures. It was endowed by a bequest of $250,000 left by John Lowell Jr., who died in 1836. T ...

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, Massachusetts, US after having moved to Canada. In 1870 he became a lecturer on

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

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

. 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 Queen's College he also lectured in Boston, Montreal, Toronto, London, and other universities including a series of 12 lectures at Boston's

.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, and the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

, 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

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s, 36

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s and a dozen

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, 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 ...

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 standard written 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 Édouard Séguin (January 20, 1812 – October 28, 1880) was a French physician and educationist born in Clamecy, Nièvre. He is remembered for his work with children having cognitive impairments in France and the United States. Background and ...

as being "...a greater invention than the telephone of his son,

". Melville saw numerous applications for his invention, including its worldwide use as a

universal language Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's people. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication said to be understood by all humans. It may be the idea o ...

. However, although heavily promoted at the

Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf The Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf was an international conference of deaf educators held in Milan, Italy in 1880. It is commonly known as the "Milan Conference" or "Milan Congress". This Congress was preceded by the Firs ...

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 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 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 Rock Creek Cemetery is an cemetery with a natural and rolling landscape located at Rock Creek Church Road, NW, and Webster Street, NW, off Hawaii Avenue, NE, in the Petworth (Washington, D.C.), Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C., across ...

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 Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1987. The voice of Bell, reciting a sentence from ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

'', can be heard at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

, as extracted from an 1881

graphophone The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was initially designed at the Volta Laboratory and Bureau, Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States. It was co ...

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)

References

Sources

* Bruce, Robert V
''Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude''
Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990. .
Alexander Graham Bell
''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

'', 2010. Retrieved 24 May 2010. * Winzer, Margret A
''The History Of Special Education: From Isolation To Integration''
Gallaudet University Press, 1993, , .

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 Academic staff of Queen's University at Kingston Scottish emigrants to the United States Academics from Edinburgh Creators of writing systems Scottish philologists Phoneticians Burials at Rock Creek Cemetery People from Colonial Beach, Virginia Elocutionists