Alexander Graham Bell Honors and Tributes - Major Awards and Tributes

Major Awards and Tributes

Among those tributes:

• Chief George Henry Martin Johnson (Onwanonsyshon) of the aboriginal Six Nations Mohawk Reserve, near Bell's home in Brantford, Ontario awarded him the title of Honorary Chief for his work in translating the unwritten Mohawk language into Visible Speech symbols (c. 1870);

• The National Association of Teachers of the Deaf elects Bell its president (1874);
• The United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Bell the master telephone patent, No. 174,465, dated March 7, 1876. It becomes the foundational asset of the Bell Telephone Company, which later evolved into AT&T, at times the world's largest telephone company. The patent is considered by many to be the most valuable ever issued in history (1876);
• The U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia made Bell's newly created telephone a featured headline worldwide just a few months after it had been patented. Among the exhibition's judges were the notable Emperor Dom Pedro II of the Empire of Brazil and the eminent British physicist William Thomson (later made Lord Kelvin). Upon hearing Bell's voice through the telephone's receiver, the emperor reputedly exclaimed: "My God! It talks!" Thomson and Emperor Pedro, who was equally amazed that the telephone could 'speak' in Portuguese, later recommended the device to the Committee of Electrical Awards, which voted Bell its Gold Medal for Electrical Equipment. Bell also won a second Gold Medal for his additional display of Visible Speech at the exposition, and further won an order of 100 telephones from Emperor Pedro for his country. Ironically, Bell—then occupied full-time as both a private teacher and as a professor at Boston University—hadn't planned on attending the exhibition due to his heavy work schedule, and left Boston only at the last moment to attend the exposition at the stern insistence of his then-fiancée and future wife Mabel Hubbard, aged 18. Dom Pedro's chance viewing of the invention at the fair was pivotal to the awards and world headlines Bell earned, helping the telephone gain public acceptance (1876);
• The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected Bell a Fellow of the Academy (1877);
• Bell received the James Watt silver medal for the telephone from the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (1877);
• The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (a.k.a. the Association of the Mechanics of Boston) awarded two gold medals to Bell, as exhibitor #626 registered to the New England Telephone Company of Boston, MA, for both the telephone and Visible Speech, twinning the results of the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia two years earlier (1878);
• The Society of Arts in London awards him his first Royal Albert medal, a silver, for his paper on the telephone (1878);
• The Third Paris World's Fair, called the Exposition Universelle, awarded Bell (along with Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison) a Grand Prize for the telephone (1878);
• Gallaudet College, earlier chartered as the Columbia Institution Of The Deaf, and at the time called the National Deaf-Mute College, of Washington, D.C. awarded Bell an Honorary Ph.D. 'in recognition of his work for the Deaf' (1880).
• The French Academy, representing the French government, awarded Bell the Volta Prize with a purse of 50,000 francs (approximately $10,000) for the invention of the telephone (1880). Since Bell was becoming increasingly affluent, he used his prize money to create endowment funds (the 'Volta Fund') and institutions in and around the United States capital of Washington, D.C.. They included the prestigious 'Volta Laboratory Association' (1880), also known as the 'Volta Laboratory' and as the 'Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory', as well as creating the Volta Bureau (1887) as a center for studies on deafness. The Volta Laboratory became a permanently funded experimental facility devoted to scientific discovery, and the very next year invented a wax phonograph cylinder that was later used by Thomas Edison;
• The President of the Third French Republic, Jules Grévy, on the recommendation of his Minister of Foreign Affairs Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire and with the presentations of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs Louis Cochery, designated Bell with the distinction of an 'Officer Of The Legion of Honour' (Légion d'honneur) by decree on 10 November 1881, in recognition of his inventions (1881);

• The Society of Arts issues their second Royal Albert silver medal to him for his paper on his proudest achievement, the Photophone, invented a year earlier (1881);

• The University of Würzburg, Bavaria granted Bell an honorary (Ph.D.) (1882).
• The National Academy of Sciences elected Bell as a member (1883);
• The American Institute of Electrical Engineers, predecessor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers elected Bell as one of its founding vice presidents, and later elevated him to its president (1884, and president 1891–1892);
• The Rupert Charles University of Heidelberg, Germany awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Medicine degree, for Bell's invention of an ultrasound metal detector, used in a bid to save the life of President James Abram Garfield (1886).
• The American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) appointed Bell its president (1891–1892);
• Harvard University granted him an honorary 'Doctor of Laws degrees (LL.D.) (1896);
• Illinois College awarded him an LL.D. degree (1896): N.B.: there are two different years cited for this degree –the college's data is shown.
• The National Geographic Society appointed him President (1898–1903).
• The United States Senate granted him several appointments as a regent of the world famous Smithsonian Institution (1898–1924);
• The Washington Academy of Sciences, founded by a group of scientists which included Samuel Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, elected Bell its President (c.1900);
• The U.S. Census Bureau appointed him a special agent to the bureau in order to determine the extent of the Twelfth Census that applied to the deaf of the United States (1900);
• The Society of Arts of London, England, awarded him the Albert Medal for his invention of the telephone (1902).
• St Andrew's University awarded Bell a Doctor of Philosophy degree (Ph.D.) (1902).
• The University of Edinburgh granted him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (1906);
• Oxford University granted him an honorary Doctor of Science degree (D.Sc./Sc.D.) (1906).
• The American Association of Engineering Societies awarded him the John Fritz Medal (1907).
• Bell and the other four members of the Aerial Experiment Association are awarded the Scientific American Prize for the First public airplane flight greater than one kilometre in the United States (1908);
• Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, presented an honorary 'Doctor of Laws degrees (LL.D.) to him (1909).
• The Bell Homestead Museum, part of the Bell Homestead National Historic Site in Brantford, Ontario, was the Bell family's first home in North America and the site where Bell invented the telephone in the July 1874. Bell's parents and extended family lived on the 10 acre site for 11 years, with the homestead being sold when his parents moved to Washington, D.C. to join their son. The museum was opened to the public in 1910. The farm, carriage house and its principal building, Melville House were earlier obtained from its last private owner by the Bell Telephone Memorial Association in 1909. Its rooms were restored to their original condition and many of its furnishings are original Bell possessions. The site also later added the Henderson Home, Canada's first telephone company office opened in 1877 and a predecessor of Bell Canada, which was moved to the museum from its original location in downtown Brantford. In the present day the museum is operated by the Bell Homestead Society, and has been designated a National Historic Site of Canada (1910).
• Upon its inception at its first meeting on November 2, 1911 in Boston, the fraternal Telephone Pioneers of America organization made Bell its first charter member. The organization has since grown to more than 600,000 individuals (1911).
• The Franklin Institute awarded Bell the Elliott Cresson Medal in the field of Engineering for "Electrical Transmission of Articulate Speech" (1912).
• George Washington University awarded him an Honourary Degree (1913).
• The Royal Society awarded him the David Edward Hughes Medal for "an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity and magnetism or their applications" (1913).
• Dartmouth College awarded Bell an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (1913);
• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers awarded him the Thomas Alva Edison Medal "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts" (1914).
• Bell, the celebrity, in New York, ceremonially inaugurated the United States' first transcontinental telephone system with a widely reported telephone call to his former assistant Thomas Watson in San Francisco, during which Watson quipped to Bell that he could hear him "much better now" (1915);
• Dr. John H. Finley, founder of the Junior American Red Cross and New York State Commissioner of Education, presented Bell with the Civic Forum Medal of Honor for Distinguished Public Service at Carnegie Hall (1917);
• The Governor General of Canada, Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, unveiled the Bell Telephone Memorial (photo below) erected in Bell's honor in The Telephone City's (Brantford, ON) Alexander Graham Bell Gardens as part of the City of Brantford's public parks system (1917).

• Bell inaugurates the Alexander Graham Bell School in Chicago, Illinois. The elementary school was founded in 1917 with 24 classrooms for hearing students and 15 classrooms for deaf students, after the Chicago School Board allocated US$285,000 for it in 1915 (approximately $6,550,000 in current dollars). The school, one of the largest built in the Chicago Public School system at the time, was opened one year earlier. (1918);
• The City of Edinburgh made him a Burgess and honored Bell with its Freedom of The City award during his final "farewell visit" to Europe (1920). He was being accompanied by his wife Mabel, and his granddaughter and secretary Mabel H. Grosvenor.