Visionary: Alexander Graham Bell
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Alexander Graham Bell was a sensitive child who showed immense range and creativity. A heart and talent for music, art, and poetry resulted in a wide range of skills, including piano playing and voice mimicry with comedic results. When Bell was 12, his mother began to lose her hearing, and he developed a finger language that allowed him to communicate to her the conversations around her.
Bell's career building moment - that eureka! moment - came when he developed a technique of speaking in clear, modulated tones that allowed his mother to hear him with relative clarity. He did this by speaking directly into his mother's forehead. This simple communicative strategy allowed him special insight into the world of acoustics and elocution. Bell's father helped develop his proficiency by teaching him how to identify symbols and their accompanying sounds.
Alexander Graham Bell's efforts as a visionary are noteworthy for two particular reasons. First, Bell's vision in life was shaped largely by experiences in his personal life that clearly drove him with a passion. The fact that his mother, and later on, his wife, Mabel Hubbard, were deaf made him even more determined to find a way to help them communicate. Second, his career building efforts were so clearly defined, his career building goals so cut in stone, that it was easy for him to focus. As we all know, the way we communicate now is made so much easier thanks to the way that Bell enabled us to communicate, and that makes all the difference. | 0 comments
