August 2nd , 1922
Alexander Graham Bell ( born Alexander Bell; March 03, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone.
He also co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.
Bell died of complications arising from diabetes on August 2, 1922, at his private estate in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, at age 75.
Bell had also been affected by pernicious anemia. His last view of the land he had inhabited was by moonlight on his mountain estate at 2:00 a.m.
While tending to him after his long illness, Mabel, his wife, whispered,
“Don’t leave me.”
By way of reply, Bell signed
“no…”,
lost consciousness, and died shortly after
Bell’s coffin was constructed of Beinn Bhreagh pine by his laboratory staff, lined with the same red silk fabric used in his tetrahedral kite experiments.
To help celebrate his life, his wife asked guests not to wear black (the traditional funeral color) while attending his service, during which soloist Jean MacDonald sang a verse of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem”:
Under a wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die And I laid me down with a will.
Upon the conclusion of Bell’s funeral, for one minute at 6:25 p.m. Eastern Time, “every phone on the continent of North America was silenced in honor of the man who had given to mankind the means for direct communication at a distance”.
Alexander Graham Bell was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on his estate where he had resided increasingly for the last 35 years of his life, overlooking Bras d’Or Lake.
He was survived by his wife Mabel, his two daughters, Elsie May and Marian, and nine of his grandchildren.
