Alexander Graham Bell honors and tributes
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The Alexander Graham Bell honors and tributes include honors bestowed upon him or awards named for him. Alexander Graham Bell received numerous honors and tributes during his life and afterwards, and new awards have been named for him.
The IEEE's Alexander Graham Bell Medal has been presented since 1976 to an individual or team, honoring outstanding contributions in the field of telecommunications.
In the early 1970s, the UK rock group The Sweet recorded a tribute to Bell and the telephone, suitably titled "Alexander Graham Bell". The song gives a fictional account of the invention, in which Bell devises the telephone so he can talk to his girlfriend who lives on the other side of the United States. The song reached the top 40 in the UK and went on to sell over one million recordings worldwide.
The Royal Bank of Scotland £1 note was issued to mark the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Alexander Graham Bell on 3 March 1997.[1] Numerous other countries have also issued coins, of both nominal and high value, as well as stamps dedicated to him and his inventions.
Eric Walters' The Hydrofoil Mystery (1999) sets a novel in Alexander Graham Bell's workshops, casting the hydrofoil as a new weapon of war being readied for use against German U-boats in the First World War.[2]
Bell was honoured on the television programs the 100 Greatest Britons (2002), the top-ten Greatest Canadians (2004), and the 100 Greatest Americans (2005). The nominees and rankings for these programs were determined by popular vote. Bell was the only person to be on more than one of the programs.
Another musical tribute to Bell, Alexander Graham Bell (2006) was written by the British songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson. The chorus reminds the listener that "of course there was the telephone, he'd be famous for that alone, but there's 50 other things as well from Alexander Graham Bell".[3]
A number of historic sites and other marks commemorate Alexander Graham Bell, as well as the world's first telephone company:
- Parks Canada maintains the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site which incorporates the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, close to the Bell estate Beinn Bhreagh. The National Historic Site in Baddeck is open to visitors, while Bell's descendant's still reside at Beinn Bhreagh;
- Alexander Graham Bell was born in a house on South Charlotte Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. There is an inscribed stone beside the doorway of this former home;
- The Bell Homestead (Melville House) overlooking Brantford, Ontario and the Grand River, was Bell's first home in North America;
- The world's first telephone company building, the Henderson Home, of the nascent Bell Telephone Company, originally built on Sheridan Street within the city of Brantford, Ontario, and then carefully relocated in 1969 to the historic Bell Homestead. Both the Bell Homestead and the Bell Telephone Company building, are maintained by the Bell Homestead Society and are open to visitors.
Additionally, a large number of Bell's writings, notebooks, papers and other documents rest at the United States Library of Congress Manuscript Devision, as the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers; the collection is available for online viewing. Another large collection of Bell's documents resides at the Alexander Graham Bell Institute.
A number of schools, institutes, organizations and scholarships have been named in honour of Bell. Among them are:
In Canada (partial list):
- Graham Bell-Victoria School, a public school in Brantford, Ontario (an amalgamation of two different public schools);
- Alexander Graham Bell Public School, on Harkins Drive in Ajax, Ontario;
- Alexander Graham Bell High School, in Halifax, Nova Scotia;
- Alexander Graham Bell Institute, a part of Cape Breton University;
In the United States (partial list):
- Alexander Graham Bell School PS 205Q, a public (K-5) school in Bayside, N.Y., N.Y.;
- Alexander Graham Bell School, a public grammar (K-8) school on the north side of Chicago and providing programs to deaf, blind, mentally disabled, gifted as well as standard students;
- Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School Academy, a (PK-8) public school on Larchmere Blvd. in Cleveland, OH serving regular and hearing impaired students;
- Alexander Graham Bell School, a preschool and kindergarten center for the Columbus Public Schools Hearing Impaired Program (CHIP) in Columbus, OH;
- Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School, a (K-1) public school in Columbus, OH;
- Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School, a (PK-1) public school for regular, gifted and deaf students in Chicago, IL;
- Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School, a school in Detroit, MI;
- Alexander Graham Bell Elementary, a (K-6) public school in Kirkland, WA;
- AG Bell Accelerated Academy, a school in Milwaukee, WI;
- Alexander Graham Bell Junior High School, in San Diego, CA
- Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and with chapters across the United States, as well as internationally;
- AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language, an independently governed, subsidiary corporation of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. It provides certification of listening, verbal and spoken language therapists, specialists and educators;
- Alexander Graham Bell Scholarship, awarded to Boston University College of Engineering students;
- Alexander Graham Bell Hall, one of the residences at Rochester Institute of Technology, adjacent to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf building.
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded membership in the Légion d'honneur.
On 3 March 2008, the birth date of Alexander Graham Bell, Google had a special front page with links to websites with information about him.[4]
There may be other awards or honors concerning Alexander Graham Bell.
[edit] References
- ^ Royal Bank Commemorative Notes
- ^ Walters 1999, p. 166-167.
- ^ Thompson's song The song mentions Bell's work with discs rather than cylinders, the hydrofoil, his work with the deaf, the invention of the respirator and several other of Bell's achievements.
- ^ http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=alexander+graham+bell Searches for Alexander Graham Bell on Google
