The Geek Atlas

Canada

004

Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada

46° 6′ 0″ N, 60° 45′ 15″ W

Alexander Graham Bell’s Summer Home

Following in the footsteps of Alexander Graham Bell isn’t easy: he moved frequently and worked on a wide variety of inventions. He was born in 1847 at 16 South Charlotte Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was home-schooled there until high school. He moved to England as a young man and helped his father teach deaf people to speak. He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1870. He spent years in the United States, mostly in the Boston area, and became a U.S. citizen; his parents remained in Canada in Brantford, Ontario, and Bell visited frequently and had a workshop there.

But the best place to understand Bell’s life and work is in Nova Scotia, where Bell lived from 1889 until his death in 1922.

Bell is known, of course, for the invention of the telephone, but he started out trying to invent a method of sending multiple telegraph signals down the same wire. He worked on his harmonic telegraph, which would send multiple signals—each having its own pitch—down the same wire at the ...