Alexander Graham Bell

Amazingly, the first telephone installation in the UK was in Plymouth at Tor Grove in Weston Peverel, now known as Pennycross. Alexander Graham Bell was visiting the town in 1877 to lecture about the invention of the telephone when he stayed at the residence of Robert Bayly. Bayly was elected to the first Devon City Council and was also a Justice of the Peace. His father founded the Marine Biological Association. While staying with Bayly, Bell installed the telephone line which connected the house and the gardener's cottage. It remained in use for many years before the apparatus was presented to the Plymouth Museum. Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847. Both his mother and wife were deaf which interested him in experimenting with hearing devices which eventually led on to his invention of the telephone. The patent was applied for in 1876. Although he is most famous for this invention, he felt that it intruded on his more important scientific research and refused to have a telephone in his study. In 1888, he became one of the founding members of the National Geographic society. Bell died in 1922. During his funeral, it was reported that, 'every phone on the continent of North America was silenced in honor of the man who had given to mankind the means for direct communication at a distance.'