The Sound and the Silence

In the last century six discoveries altered the course of human destiny: nuclear fission, the microchip, television, the radio, the telephone and development of the airplane. This is the true story of the man responsible for two of them...and the incredible woman he loved. Sixteen year old Mabel Bell was deaf. He became her teacher and taught her how to speak. After they were married she managed his business affairs and later, when he became world famous, she handled all of his finances. He had a childlike curiosity about everything around him. He was an accomplished pianist, an author, lecturer, and an extraordinary inventive genius—the Venetian blind, the iron lung, the hydrofoil, aircraft tricycle landing gear, wing ailerons, a method of producing fresh water from sea water for sailors adrift, genetics, animal breeding, kites, airfoils, he founded the National Geographic Society, the list goes on and on. Yet above all he was a teacher, a warm hearted kindly man whom the almighty, in his wisdom, endowed with genius. It has been conservatively estimated that over a half billion people on earth owe their livelihood and well being—at least in part—to that genius of Alexander Graham Bell.