Alexander Graham Bell led a fascinating life. He was an immigrant, an inventor, a pioneering speech teacher, and a champion of educating the hearing impaired. Bell was raised by a mother who had nearly no hearing, married a deaf woman, and was lifelong friends with Helen Keller. Few people realize that Bell considered his work with the deaf the most important of his life. Quite a statement, considering Bell's inventions ranged from telephony and phonographs to airplanes and hydrofoil boats! Few remember that Bell was called to the bedside of fatally shot President Garfield in 1881 to use his newly-invented "telephonic probe" metal detector in the search for the embedded bullet. Nor do most know he was part of the Curtiss group of airplane inventors competing against the Wright brothers. The life of Alexander Graham Bell paralleled many of the most important discoveries and inventions of that era. This exciting biography includes science and history background on Bell's era, as well as sidebars and biographies of inventors and scientists who influenced-and competed with-him. Readers will build telegraphs, liquid transmitters, intercoms, metal detectors, and tetrahedral kites as they explore the science behind Bell's wide-ranging inventions.
