Alexander Graham Bell Seeks to Organize the First Ever Convention of Teachers of the Deaf Who Use His Technique of Visible Speech

An extremely rare early letter of Bell, only two this early having surfaced in the past 20 years

Sign language was the first method designed to enable the deaf to communicate. Alexander Melville Bell, a British linguist, was known internationally as a teacher of speech and proper elocution and was an author of books on the subject. He saw signing as inadequate and in 1867 developed a concept he called “Visible Speech”. This is a system of phonetic symbols that represent the position of the speech organs in articulating sounds. It is composed of symbols that show the position and movement of the throat, tongue, and lips as they produce the sounds of language. The system was used to aid the deaf in learning to speak. Bell’s son, Alexander Graham Bell, was interested in this system. His mother was deaf and he would often speak to her by placing his mouth close to her forehead, believing the vibrations from his voice would help her distinguish speech. The younger Bell learned the symbols of visible speech, and assisted his father in giving public demonstrations of it. He mastered it to the point that he later improved upon his father’s work. Eventually, Alexander Graham Bell became a powerful advocate of visible speech in the United States.

Also in 1867, Abel S. Clarke founded the Clarke School for the Deaf (also known as the American Asylum for Deaf Mutes), whose purpose was to prepare children who are deaf to succeed in the wider world. The Bells saw the Clarke School as an opportunity to bring visible speech to more people, and their approaches to the school were well received. In 1871, Alexander Graham Bell came to Clarke School to teach the faculty his father’s method of visible speech. He would be associated with the school for 51 years, serving on the Board from 1898-1922 and as its chairman for the last five years of his life (1917-1922). In 1872 Bell presented his father’s system to the American School for the Deaf, which had been co-founded by Thomas Gallaudet.

So Bell’s interest in sound and sound technology was deep-rooted and personal. His work for the deaf directly led to his experiments that resulted in the invention of the telephone. In 1871, Bell started working on the harmonic telegraph – a device that allowed multiple messages to be transmitted over a wire at the same time. While trying to perfect this technology, Bell became preoccupied with finding a way to transmit human voice over wires. By 1875, Bell, with the help of his partner Thomas Watson, had come up with a simple receiver that could turn electricity into sound. In 1876, he was granted a patent for the telephone.

As Bell himself described the lead-up to 1874, “Before the year 1874 articulation teachers [those who used his visible speech to communicate with the deaf] constituted only a small minority of the instructors of the deaf and they possessed no organization of their own to advance their work. In that year organization was for the first time effected. On the twenty fourth of January 1874 those teachers who employed my father’s system of Visible Speech in the instruction of their pupils met in convention in Worcester Mass.”

Sign language eventually won over as the preferred method of teaching but Bell’s and his father’s deep interest in sound and teaching the deaf to communicate played an important role in progress in that realm and indirectly contributed to the invention of the telephone.

Autograph letter signed, four pages, Salem, Massachusetts, January 9, 1874, to Professor Abel S. Clarke (whom he addresses as “Dear Friend’, at the American Asylum for Deaf Mutes, trying to arrange a convention of teachers of the deaf to of visible speech. Bell writes, “I have just returned from Canada and seen the ‘Annals’ [likely the publication “The American Annals of the Deaf]. Let me thank you most sincerely for the very excellent way in which you have defended Visible Speech. It gave me great pleasure to see your article. I had intended to pay you a visit on my way here but the fates had intervened. On New Year’s Day, our horse, who has always been a very quiet inoffensive animal, took a new departure and rushed off on his own account, leaving me on my back in the middle of the road, while he went off with the carriage, and my sister. My sister jumped into a snow drift and escaped with a sprained ankle. I received some slight injuries about the back which delayed me so long in Canada that I had to go directly to Boston without calling anywhere on the way. A few days more, will, I hope, set me all to rights again.

“I am trying to arrange a convention of teachers of visible speech for the purpose of comparing notes and discussing plans for the advancement of the system. All of the teachers of the Clarke Institution and Boston School have agreed to meet me at Worcester on the 24th of January. Will you and Miss Sweet join us? Miss Hayes will secure a room for us to meet in, and I shall inform you of the place of meeting in a few days. I think that periodical conventions of teachers of visible speech to discuss practical points connected with the teaching of articulation will do much for the advancement of the cause. If you and Miss Sweet can come, I can calculate upon at least 15 teachers of the system being present. Please let me hear from you as soon as possible. If you were to leave Hartford by an early train on Saturday, we could have a session of about five hours, and all of us return to our respective towns the same day. With kind regards to Mrs. Clarke and yourself, yours sincerely, A. Graham Bell.”

This letter, relating to the work that was so crucial for him, is one of the earliest of Bell to reach the market, and is a real rarity. A search of public sale records going back 100 years indicates that just two have turned in the last 20 years. It is also a very uncommon ALS of Bell, and a four page one at that. It is only our second Bell ALS in all our decades in this field.