Success Has Many Fathers, I Guess

While traveling east recently, I went through Ontario, Canada, and by chance chose the city of Brantford for an overnight stop. With a population of about 90,000, Brantford is a moderate-sized city southwest of Hamilton, which is in turn southwest of Toronto.

Brantford's nickname is "The Telephone City." Why? Because it's where Alexander Graham Bell lived, and according to the materials at his family home in Brantford, it's where he invented the telephone.


The Bell homestead in Brantford, Ontario.

I was amazed to discover this fact. I remember learning about Bell in school, but not specifically where his work took place, or the fact that he was Canadian. Asking a number of other friends, I couldn't find a single one who remembered ever being taught about Bell's Canadian roots. I was pretty sure it was a case of American educational chauvinism, a clear example of (mis)information.

Well, it turns out it's actually not quite so simple as Canadian vs. American, although I still think my history book omitted a few important things. According to the Wikipedia entry on him, Bell was actually Scottish, but moved to Brantford with his parents when he was 23. While living there, he definitely experimented with the technologies that became the telephone, but he also soon accepted a position at Boston University and worked on his invention during the school year, while still spending the summers in Brantford and working there as well.

The famous "Mr. Watson -- come here" moment happened in Massachusetts, but it was not achieved with the technology that Bell finally developed into a working a telephone. (I don't remember learning that fact in school.) The version that became the basis for everything that came afterward was created in Brantford.

Bell became a naturalized U.S. citizen soon afterward, so it's not entirely incorrect for U.S. history texts to claim him, but it seems a bit disingenuous to only mention the parts that took place in the U.S. Especially when they were not always the ones that led to the telephone's success.