A Graham Bell Telephone Memorial

Abstract

THE Duke of Devonshire, Governor-General of Canada, on behalf of the Bell Memorial Committee, presented on October 24, 19.17, to the town of Brantford, Ontario, a public park which will be known as the Alexander Graham Bell Gardens, the house in which the invention of the telephone was made, and a memorial monument to the inventor himself. For the accompanying photograph of the memorial we are indebted to the courtesy of Mr. G. H. Grosvenor, editor of the National Geographic Magazine of Washington. It is by the sculptor, W. S. Allward, and is allegorical. The figure on each side, one representing the speaker and the other the listener, is in bronze, and mounted on a granite pedestal. The panel on the crest of the memorial represents “Humanity in communication,” the three shadowy figures being Knowledge, Joy, and Sorrow. They are bound together by lines representing telephone wires, the curved outline of the upper parfof the monument representing the curvature of the earth. On the right and left are two circular panels inscribed as follows:, “Opus Telephonica Patri Dedicatum Est” and “Mundus Telephonica Usu Recreatus Est.” Underneath the central panel are the words: “To commemorate the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in Brantford in 1874.”