Volta Laboratory and Bureau - Legacy

Legacy

In 1887, the Volta Associates effectively sold their sound-recording-related patents to the newly-created American Graphophone Company through a share exchange with the Volta Graphophone Company. Bell used the considerable profits from the sale of his Graphophone shares to found the Volta Bureau as an instrument "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf", and also to fund his other philanthropic works on deafness. His scientific and statistical research work on deafness became so extensive that within a few years his documentation had engulfed an entire room of the Volta Laboratory in his father's backyard carriage house. Due to the limited space available there, and with the assistance of his father who contributed US$15,000 (approximately $380,000 in today's dollars), Bell had the new Volta Bureau building constructed nearby in 1893.

Under Superintendent John Hitz's direction, the Volta Bureau became one of the world's premiere centers for research on deafness and pedagogy for the deaf. Bell's Volta Bureau worked in close cooperation with the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (AAPTSD), which was organized in 1890, and which elected Bell its president. The Volta's research was later absorbed into the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf (now also known as the 'AG Bell') upon its creation when the Volta Bureau merged with the AAPTSD in 1908, with Bell's financial support. The AAPTSD was renamed as the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf in 1956.

The historical record of the Volta Laboratory was greatly improved in 1947 when Laura F. Tainter, the widow of associate Sumner Tainter, donated ten surviving volumes (out of 13) of Tainter's Home Notes to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History – Volumes 9, 10 and 13 having been destroyed in a fire in September 1897. The daily agenda books described in detail the project work conducted at the laboratory during the 1880s.

In 1950 Laura Tainter donated other historical items, including Sumner Tainter's typed manuscript "Memoirs of Charles Sumner Tainter", the first 71 pages of which detailed his experiences up to 1887, plus further writings on his work at the Graphophone factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Further information: Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing