. He was totally absorbed in his strange machine which he had been working on for about three years. Suddenly he heard an almost inaudible sound, the first sound ever transmitted through a wire. The machine was the very first telephone and the young man was Alexander Graham Bell.
Although he was only 28 years old at the time, Alexander had been working in the fields of speech, anatomy, electricity and telegraphy for over 11 years. His grandfather had invented a system to help people with speech problems. In fact, his whole family had been involved in the study of speech and sounds. Alexander’s father had also written several books on how to speak correctly as well as creating a form of sign language called ‘visible speech’.