| 1880 |
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The National Bell Telephone Company becomes the American Bell Telephone Company. |
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February 15 |
Marian (Daisy) Bell, a daughter, is born. |
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Bell and his young associate, Charles Sumner Tainter, invent the photophone, an apparatus that transmits sound through light. |
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Fall |
The French government awards the Volta Prize for scientific achievement in electricity to Bell. He uses the prize money to set up the Volta Laboratory as a permanent, self-supporting experimental laboratory devoted to invention. |
| 1881 |
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At the Volta Laboratory, Bell, his cousin, Chichester Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter invent a wax cylinder for Thomas Edison's phonograph. |
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July-August |
When President Garfield is shot, Bell attempts unsuccessfully to locate the bullet inside his body by using an electromagnetic device called an induction balance. |
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August 15 |
Death in infancy of Bell's son, Edward (b. 1881). |
| 1882 |
November |
Bell is granted American citizenship. |
| 1883 |
|
At Scott Circle in Washington, D.C., Bell starts a day school for deaf children.
Bell is elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
With Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell funds the publication of Science, a journal that would communicate new research to the American scientific community. |
[Hellen Keller, Annie Sullivan and Alexander Graham Bell, full-length portrait, seated outdoors].
Reproduction Number LC-G9-Z1 137 816-A.
Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection, Prints and Photographs,
Library of Congress.
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November 17 |
Death in infancy of Bell's son, Robert (b. 1883). |
| 1885 |
March 3 |
The American Telephone & Telegraph Company is formed to manage the expanding long-distance business of the American Bell Telephone Company. |
| 1886 |
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Bell establishes the Volta Bureau as a center for studies on the deaf. |
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Summer |
Bell begins buying land on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. There he eventually builds his summer home, Beinn Bhreagh. |
| 1887 |
February |
Bell meets six-year-old blind and deaf Helen Keller in Washington, D.C. He helps her family find a private teacher by recommending that her father seek help from Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. |
