Background
Bell was born in Saint Andrews, Fife, Scotland.
Bell was born in Saint Andrews, Fife, Scotland.
His family"s vocations and activities were highly similar to Melville"s, its member"s being gifted in music and elocution. David Charles, Professor of English Literature and Elocution, had previously taught at Ireland"s Dublin University, where one of his students was playwright George Bernard Shaw, whom he later introduced to Melville. Shaw, under Melville"s influence was inspired to write the play Pygmalion (which spawned the musical production and movie My Fair Lady and refers directly to "Bell"s Visible Speech"), and also became a life-long advocate of phonetic transcription —leaving a large part of his estate to the development of a "fonetic alfabet".
The young inventor, positioned at the A. Wallis Ellis store in the neighbouring community of Mount Pleasant, listened to his uncle"s voice emanating from his receiver housed in a metal box.
Initially David Bell"s voice couldn"t be heard distinctly as"..all kinds and sizes of wire were used in stringing from the house to Mount Pleasant road". However, the Dominion Telegraph manager, Walter Griffin, decided to attach the wire to a telegraph battery to see if it would improve the transmission, which it did, and then "the voices then came in distinctly."
David"s son Charles James Bell (Dublin, April 12, 1858 – October 1, 1929) would marry Roberta Wolcott Hubbard (June 4, 1859 – July 4, 1885), and then Grace Blatchford Hubbard (October 9, 1861 – July 16, 1948), sisters of Mabel Hubbard (Alexander Graham Bell"s wife), and become President of the American Security and Trust Company in the Washington, District of Columbia area.
