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The next time your phone rings, you can thank Alexander Graham Bell.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, he taught deaf people when he was young. His dad, who did the same, also wrote schoolbooks on speech. In 1870, Bell’s whole family moved to Canada. He moved to Boston on his own two years later. He gave private lessons to deaf people. He even married one of his pupils. Working with the deaf got him interested in how vibrations in the air make sounds. At age 29, he patented what he called the “speaking telegraph.” Today, most phones use a different technology than the one he invented. But his work made the phone part of our lives.