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50 free Alexander Graham Bell trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first US patent for the telephone on 7 March 1876, refused to keep one in his study, and considered a wireless light-beam telephone his real masterpiece. He taught the deaf, tutored Helen Keller, hunted a bullet in President Garfield, flew giant tetrahedral kites, set a world water-speed record with a hydrofoil at 72 and bred sheep for thirty years hoping for extra nipples. This quiz covers the whole restless life. Easy questions ask what he invented, what he first said down the line and where he was born. Harder ones want the middle name he begged for at ten, the dog he taught to "talk", the rival who filed a caveat the same morning, the sum Western Union turned down, the queen he demonstrated to at Osborne House, the pseudonym he used in National Geographic, the Gaelic name of his Nova Scotia estate and the aircraft that made the first flight in Canada. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's biography of Alexander Graham Bell, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Made for history and science teachers, telephone nerds and quiz hosts. Related quizzes: Thomas Edison, Inventions and Famous Scientists.
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Q 01Bell is credited with patenting which invention?
The first practical telephone
He considered it an intrusion on his real scientific work and refused to have one in his study.
Q 02On what date was Bell awarded the first US patent for the telephone?
March 7, 1876
It was patent number 174,465, covering the transmission of vocal sounds "by causing electrical undulations".
Q 03What were the first intelligible words transmitted by Bell's telephone?
"Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you"
He used a liquid transmitter similar to Elisha Gray's design, only as a proof of concept, and never used it in public again.
Q 04In which city was Bell born on March 3, 1847?
Edinburgh
A stone inscription on South Charlotte Street marks the family home as his birthplace.
Q 05Why was Bell allowed to take the name "Graham" for his 11th birthday?
He begged to have one like his brothers
The name honoured Alexander Graham, a Canadian family friend being treated by his father; relatives still called him "Aleck".
Q 06What did the 12-year-old Bell build for his best friend's family flour mill?
A dehusking machine
It combined rotating paddles with nail brushes and was used at the mill for years; in return the boys got a workshop to "invent" in.
Q 07Which two members of Bell's immediate family were deaf, profoundly shaping his life's work?
His mother and his wife
He learned a finger language to sit beside his mother and spoke in modulated tones directly into her forehead so she could hear him.
Q 08What was the phonetic symbol system developed by Bell's father called?
Visible Speech
He could recite written passages in Latin, Gaelic and even Sanskrit from the symbols without knowing the languages.
Q 09What did Bell and his brother build after seeing Wheatstone's speaking automaton in 1863?
A talking mechanical head
When a bellows forced air through its windpipe it said a recognisable "Mama", delighting the neighbours.
Q 10What did visitors believe Bell's Skye Terrier could say after he manipulated its lips and vocal cords?
"How are you, grandmama?"
The dog growled continuously while Bell reached into its mouth to shape a crude "Ow ah oo ga ma ma".
Q 11Which German scientist's book on tone did Bell mistranslate, giving him his 'valuable blunder'?
Hermann von Helmholtz
He wrongly concluded the author had transmitted vowel sounds electrically, and reasoned that consonants and speech could follow.
Q 12Which disease killed both of Bell's brothers and prompted the family's move to Canada in 1870?
Tuberculosis
His parents feared their remaining son was also sickly; his father had once recovered his own health in Newfoundland.
Q 13Near which Ontario town did the Bell family buy their farm at Tutelo Heights in 1870?
Brantford
He set up a workshop in the carriage house near a hollow he called his "dreaming place".
Q 21Bell's August 10, 1876 test over eight miles to Paris, Ontario, is often described as what?
The world's first long-distance call
The eight-mile test proved the telephone worked over distance, at least one way; the first two-way call came that October.
Q 22For how much did Bell and his partners offer to sell the telephone patent to Western Union?
$100,000
The company said no; two years later its president reportedly said $25 million would have been a bargain.
Q 23Which monarch did Bell demonstrate the telephone to at Osborne House on January 14, 1878?
Queen Victoria
Q 14Which Indigenous language did Bell transcribe into his father's phonetic symbols, earning an Honorary Chief title?
Mohawk
He discovered the Six Nations Reserve across the river and took part in a ceremony wearing a headdress.
Q 15Which famous pupil, unable to see, hear or speak, came to Bell as a young child?
Helen Keller
She later broke ground for his Volta Bureau in 1893 and said he devoted his life to piercing that "inhuman silence".
Q 16What was the "harmonic telegraph" Bell worked on in the early 1870s meant to do?
Send several messages down one wire at different pitches
Western Union had hired Edison and Elisha Gray to solve the same problem of multiplexing telegraph lines.
Q 17Which two men financed Bell's experiments and shared in the telephone profits?
Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders
Both were fathers of deaf pupils of Bell's; one of them became his father-in-law.
Q 18What did Joseph Henry reply when Bell said he lacked the electrical knowledge to build his invention?
"Get it!"
Henry had told him he had "the germ of a great invention", and the encouragement kept Bell going.
Q 19Which rival inventor filed a telephone patent caveat the same morning as Bell's application?
Elisha Gray
The debate over who arrived first at the patent office has never fully died down.
Q 20Which Italian inventor's 1834 telephone claim did the US House of Representatives acknowledge in 2002?
Antonio Meucci
His working models were said to have been lost at a Western Union subsidiary's laboratory.
She found it "quite extraordinary" though "rather faint", and asked to buy the equipment.
Q 24Which emperor was the first person to buy stock in the Bell Telephone Company?
Pedro II of Brazil
He had visited Bell's demonstration at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, and one of the first private telephones was installed in his palace at Petrópolis.
Q 25Which future Lord Kelvin called the telephone 'the greatest by far of all the marvels' at the 1876 Centennial?
Sir William Thomson
The Philadelphia exhibition brought the telephone to international attention.
Q 26Whom in San Francisco did Bell call in the first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call in 1915?
Thomas Watson
The same two men had held the first two-way telephone conversation over two miles of wire in 1876.
Q 27How many patent court challenges did Bell Telephone face in 18 years, never losing a final trial?
587
Five went to the US Supreme Court; Bell's notebooks and family letters established the lineage of his experiments.
Q 28What was the inventor's wedding present to his bride Mabel Hubbard in 1877?
1,487 of his 1,497 telephone company shares
The couple then took a year-long honeymoon in Europe with a handmade telephone in the luggage.
Q 29What was the one unusual request Mabel made of her fiancé about his name?
Use "Alec" instead of "Aleck"
From 1876 he signed himself "Alec Bell".
Q 30In which year did Bell, a British subject by birth, become a naturalised US citizen?
1882
He later said he was "not one of those hyphenated Americans", though the US, Canada and the UK all claim him.