Alexander Graham Bell’s Birthplace

14 S Charlotte St, Edinburgh EH2 4AX

As the plaque beside the entrance explains, this is the birthplace of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. He left Edinburgh in 1870 when he was 23 years of age, settling first in Canada and then in the United States. After a couple of years, he had set up a school for training teachers of the deaf in Boston (both Bell’s mother and wife were deaf), just as his father had done in Edinburgh, at Dumbiedykes. He then became a professor at Boston University, and in 1876 he successfully demonstrated his great invention which was to change the world of communications. Bell patented his telephone immediately and went on to co-found the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.