Teaching With Documents: Alexander Graham Bell's Patent for the
Telephone and Thomas Edison's Patent for the Electric Lamp In
1876 Americans held a Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia to
celebrate the nation's birth 100 years earlier. It was the first
world's fair to be held in the United States, and it announced
for all to see that the nation had come of age as an industrial
power. Over 8 million Americans attended, many traveling the
railways that now spanned the continent. Of all the exhibition
buildings, Machinery Hall drew the most admiration and wonder.
Its displays were powered by the world's largest steam engine.
Inside, inventions by two of America's greatest inventors were
on display. Alexander Graham Bell exhibited the first telephone,
and Thomas Alva Edison presented the automatic telegraph, one of
more than 1,000 inventions he would patent in his lifetime.
Together their inventions changed American life in ways that
still affect us today. Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham
Bell (1847-1922)