Bell : Cornell University Press : 9780801496912 : 0801496918 : 02 Jan 1990 : The result of a decade of study with the blessing and help of Bell's descendants, this is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and handsomely researched biography of Bell since C. D. MacKenzie's 1928 work. The author is no stylist but he has assimilated a massive amount of material into a coherent view of the man and his accomplishment. Bell's Scots forebears were strenuously devoted to the study of the spoken word. Grandfather Bell was a teacher of elocution by way of the stage and there has been speculation that his play The Bride had elements pointing to Shaw's Pygmalion; but Shaw in his preface paid tribute to Alexander's father Melville, whose "Visual Speech" was a trailblazing attempt to universalize the phonetic alphabet. Alexander arrived in Canada with his parents in 1870 and became involved in what was his lifelong interest - the teaching and rehabilitation of the deaf. While the inventor experimented