Welcome to the second edition of Maritime-related blog content! The topic of today’s post did much work on Cape Breton Island. You may recognize his name from your sky-high cell phone bill, a Canadian history class, or just because you’re smart like that. Alexander Graham Bell filed the first telephone patent. Previously existing telegraph technology had been able to transmit up to 4 Morse code signals on the same wire; Bell’s advance in 1876 allowed enough to be sent that the beeps began to blend into a reproduction of the human voice at the other end.
Most of Alexander Graham Bell’s life was spent around the Deaf community. His mother was hard of hearing and he met his wife, Mabel Hubbard, in Boston while training teachers for schools for Deaf people. Mabel became Deaf after a severe case of scarlet fever when she was five years old. His day job while he experimented at Western Union Telephone Company was in the teaching profession. In those early days, Graham Bell would have signed with his wife in Scotland-accented BSL. Alexander swore, against many ideas of the time, that people who were Deaf or Hard of Hearing could be valuable, intelligent, and important members of society.
His legacy is corroded, however, when one looks at how AGB intended to connect the Deaf and hearing communities. Alexander’s father, Melville, had invented a method, called Visible Speech, for the use of teachers at schools for Deaf people. Visible Speech arranged symbols representing tongue, lip, teeth, and palate positions; throat and breath patterns; and cadence to represent speech for those who could not hear what sounds they were creating. He believed, and passed the idea onto his son, that Deaf people could never be full, proper members of society unless they could speak and read lips. Graham Bell looked negatively upon a “great calamity” that had come to the nation: American Sign Language was allowing Deaf people to form a community and fight for their right to choose their favored methods of communication. Alexander was greatly opposed to the continuation of Deaf Heritage.
Alexander’s second interest beyond the transmission of speech was genetics, inheritance, and farm breeding. He became involved in eugenics. Eugenics is the belief that there is value in controlling who can have children to improve the traits of the human race. This belief necessarily involves the stripping of human rights from people deemed to have undesirable traits. Graham Bell believed Deaf / Hard of Hearing was something to be bred out of society because any he viewed any flaws with being unable to hear prevented people from being productive and contributing members to society as a whole. He stopped short of campaigning to ban marriages among Deaf people, but he established day schools where hearing teachers banned sign language use in class. In his view, Deaf people should never belong to their own culture: they should marry and have children with a hearing person.
In 2004, Alexander Graham Bell was voted the ninth greatest Canadian of all time. That deserves to be called into question now. Mr Bell provides a clear example of the value of separating the inventor from his invention. He connected people thousands of miles away but created isolation within the same room. It is our goal at QASL to go beyond simply teaching the language and confront biases and ignorance…ignorance causes real pain.
References
History Through Deaf Eyes Exhibition. “The Influence of Alexander Graham Bell.” National Deaf Life Museum, Gallaudet University, 2020.
Hochfelder, David. “Alexander Graham Bell.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 28 Feb. 2020.
Jay, Michelle. “Home.” StartASL.com, Sumo, 20 Mar. 2020.
WETA. “Deaf Life, Signing, Alexander Graham Bell and the NAD.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 2007.
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