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50-455: One of his daughters, Mabel Gardiner Hubbard , married Alexander Graham Bell . Hubbard was born, raised and educated in Boston, Massachusetts , to Samuel Hubbard (June 2, 1785 – December 24, 1847), a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice, and Mary Ann Greene (April 19, 1790 – July 10, 1827). His younger brother was Charles Eustis Hubbard (1842-1928), who later became the first secretary and clerk of

100-609: A graphophone . These improvements were invented by Alexander Bell's cousin Chester Bell , a chemist, and Charles Sumner Tainter , an optical instrument maker, at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Hubbard and Chester Bell approached Edison about combining their interests, but Edison refused, resulting in the Volta Laboratory Association merging the shares of their Volta Graphophone Company with

150-457: A congressional hearing at a young age. Her avoidance of the deaf community until her middle age when her parents died and left her to assume their roles as benefactor to the societies for the deaf, would later lead to criticisms that she was embarrassed by her impairment. Described as "strong and self-assured", Hubbard became one of Bell's pupils at his new school for the deaf, and later evolved into his confidant. They married on July 11, 1877, in

200-656: A day, later became the Dictaphone Corporation . Shortly after American Graphophone creation, Jesse H. Lippincott used nearly $ 1 million of an inheritance to gain control of it, as well as the rights to the Graphophone and the Bell and Tainter patents. He directly invested $ 200,000 into American Graphophone, and agreed to purchase 5,000 machines yearly, in return for sales rights to the Graphophone (except in Virginia, Delaware, and

250-641: A greatly impaired sense of balance , to the extent that it was very difficult for her to walk at night in the dark. Mabel was the inspiration for her father's involvement in the founding of the first oral school for the deaf in the United States, the Clarke School for the Deaf . Having been educated in both the United States and in Europe, she learned to both talk and lip-read with great skill in multiple languages. She

300-709: A group of entrepreneurs licensed by the American Graphophone Company to retail graphophones in Washington DC, ultimately acquired American Graphophone Company in 1893. In 1904, Columbia Phonograph Company established itself in Toronto, Canada. Two years later, in 1906, the American Graphophone company reorganized and changed its name to Columbia Graphophone Company to reflect its association with Columbia. In 1918, Columbia Graphophone Company reorganized to form

350-419: A retailer, Columbia Graphophone Company—and a manufacturer, Columbia Graphophone Manufacturing Company. In 1923, Louis Sterling bought Columbia Phonograph Co. and reorganized it yet again, giving birth to the future record giant Columbia Records . Early machines compatible with Edison cylinders were modified treadle machines. The upper-works connected to a spring or electric motor (called Type K electric) in

400-521: A simple boulder of granite. Hubbard was the indirect source of her husband's early commercial success after his creation of the telephone. The U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 made Bell's newly invented telephone a featured headline worldwide. Judges Emperor Dom Pedro II of the Empire of Brazil and the eminent British physicist William Thomson ( Lord Kelvin ) recommended his device to

450-538: Is detailed in the book One Thousand Years of Hubbard History , by Edward Warren Day. He was portrayed by a suitably bewhiskered Charles Coburn in the popular biopic The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). In 1890, Mount Hubbard on the Alaska - Yukon border was named in his honor by an expedition co-sponsored by the National Geographic Society while he was president. The Hubbard Glacier (Greenland)

500-773: Is now both popular and expensive. He died on December 11, 1897, at Twin Oaks , his residence in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.. His funeral was held at the Church of the Covenant in Washington, where he was president of the board of trustees. His widow died in a car accident on October 20, 1909, in Washington. Through his daughter Gertrude, he was the grandfather of Gertrude Hubbard Grossmann (1882–1919), who married Peter Stuyvesant Pillot (1870–1935), at Hubbard's home, Twin Oaks, in 1903. Their daughter, Rosalie Pillot (1907–1959)

550-540: The Aerial Experimental Association (AEA), for the purpose of constructing "a practical flying aerodrome", Canada 's first heavier-than-air vehicle, the Silver Dart . Based on their scientific experiments, the aircraft they designed and built incorporated several technical innovations not previously invented for flight, including lateral control by means of ailerons . Partly because of her founding of

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600-540: The Committee of Electrical Awards , which voted Bell the Gold Medal for Electrical Equipment . Bell also won a second Gold Medal for Visible Speech , for his additional display at the exposition, helping to propel him to international fame. Bell, who was then a full-time teacher, hadn't even planned on exhibiting at the fair due to his heavy teaching schedule and preparation for his students' examinations. He went there only at

650-724: The Library of Congress with a fund for additions. In 1894, Hubbard was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society In 1846, Hubbard married Gertrude Mercer McCurdy (1827–1909), the daughter of Robert Henry McCurdy , a prominent New York City businessman, and Gertrude Mercer Lee, who was the niece of Theodore Frelinghuysen , a United States Senator and former vice presidential candidate. Her brother, Richard Aldrich McCurdy , served as president of Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York . Together, they had six children: Gardiner Hubbard's daughter Mabel became deaf at

700-408: The "harmonic telegraph" or acoustic telegraphy . To acquire such patents, Hubbard and his partner Thomas Sanders (whose son was deaf) financed Alexander Graham Bell's experiments and development of an acoustic telegraph, which led to his invention of the telephone . Following Curtis's retirement, Hubbard relocated to Washington, D.C. , where he continued to practice law for 5 more years. In 1876, he

750-648: The A.A.A.S, the American Association for the Advancement of Science , which was founded in 1848, from financial peril and extinction by enabling its purchase of the (then privately owned) " Science " magazine, which he also founded, in 1883. He served as a trustee of Columbian University from 1883 until his death. He was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution . He created a large collection of etchings and engravings , which were given by his widow to

800-557: The AEA, but also for founding social and educational institutions, she was named a National Historic Person in 2018. Notes Citations Graphophone The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph . It was invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C. , United States. Its trademark usage

850-639: The Bell Telephone Company. Hubbard was a grandson of Boston merchant Gardiner Greene . He was also a descendant of Lion Gardiner , an early English settler and soldier in the New World who founded the first English settlement in what later became the State of New York , and whose legacy includes Gardiners Island which remains in the family. He attended Phillips Academy , Andover, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1841. He then studied law at Harvard , and

900-562: The Brodhead-Bell Mansion, which they occupied for several years, and from 1888 onwards residing increasingly at their Beinn Bhreagh ( Gaelic for "beautiful mountain") estate, in Cape Breton , Nova Scotia , Canada. After her husband, Bell's death on August 2, 1922, Hubbard slowly lost her sight and grew increasingly consigned to the care of her daughters, withdrawing into a world of silent darkness. She died of pancreatic cancer at

950-662: The Cambridge home of her parents, when she was 19, more than 10 years Bell's junior. Together they had four children, including two daughters: Elsie May Bell (1878–1964) who married Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor of National Geographic fame, and Marian Hubbard Bell (1880–1962), who was referred to as "Daisy", and who was nearly named Photophone by Bell after her birth. Hubbard also bore two sons, Edward (1881) and Robert (1883), both of whom died shortly after birth leaving their parents bereft. From 1877, she and "Alec", as she preferred to call Bell, lived in Washington, D.C. at their home,

1000-535: The Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts . It was the first oral school for the deaf in the United States, and Hubbard remained a trustee for the rest of his life. Hubbard entered the national stage by becoming a proponent for the nationalization of the telegraph system (then a monopoly of the Western Union Company , as he explained) under the U.S. Postal Service stating in an article: "The Proposed Changes in

1050-677: The District of Columbia). Soon after, Lippincott purchased the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company and its patents for US$ 500,000, and exclusive sales rights of the Phonograph in the United States from Ezrah T. Gilliand (who had previously been granted the contract by Edison) for $ 250,000, leaving Edison with the manufacturing rights. . He then created the North American Phonograph Company in 1888 to consolidate

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1100-469: The Telegraphic System", "It is not contended that the postal system is free from defects, but that it removes many of the grave evils of the present system, without the introduction of new ones; and that the balance of benefits greatly preponderates in favor of the cheap rates, increased facilities, limited and divided powers of the postal system." During the late 1860s, Hubbard lobbied Congress to pass

1150-460: The U.S. Postal Telegraph Bill known as the Hubbard Bill. The bill would have chartered the U.S. Postal Telegraph Company that would be connected to the U.S. Post Office , but the bill did not pass. To benefit from the bill, Hubbard needed patents which dominated essential aspects of telegraph technology such as sending multiple messages simultaneously on a single telegraph wire. This was called

1200-495: The Volta Laboratory to develop and distinguish their machine from Thomas Edison's Phonograph. Among their innovations, the researchers experimented with lateral recording techniques as early as 1881. Contrary to the vertically-cut grooves of Edison Phonographs, the lateral recording method used a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a "zig zag" pattern across the record. While cylinder phonographs never employed

1250-431: The age of five from scarlet fever . She later became a student of Alexander Graham Bell , who taught deaf children, and they eventually married. Hubbard's house on Brattle Street in Cambridge (on whose lawn, in 1877, Hubbard's daughter Mabel married Alexander Graham Bell) no longer stands. But a large beech tree from its garden still (in 2011) remains. To service his then-modern Cambridge house, Hubbard wanted gas lights,

1300-528: The coiled cardboard tube cores of the wax cylinder records. The shift from tinfoil to wax resulted in increased sound fidelity and record longevity. Besides being far easier to handle, the wax recording medium also allowed for lengthier recordings and created superior playback quality. Additionally the Graphophones initially deployed foot treadles to rotate the recordings, then wind-up clockwork drive mechanisms, and finally migrated to electric motors, instead of

1350-469: The company that later evolved into Columbia Records in 1886. Hubbard was also interested in the public side of science. After his move to Washington, he was one of the founders and the first president of the National Geographic Society , serving in that capacity from 1888 to 1897. Today, the Hubbard Medal is given for distinction in exploration, discovery, and research. In 1897, he also helped to rescue

1400-473: The de facto president and chairman of the Bell Telephone Company, which later evolved into American Telephone & Telegraph , (aka AT&T) at times the world's largest telephone company . Hubbard was highly intelligent but usually preferred to remain in the background while Bell conducted scientific discussions and meetings among his peers—for many decades he held regular Wednesday evening intellectual salons in their home parlour , dutifully documented in

1450-405: The entrepreneur who distributed the telephone to the world. Hubbard also became a principal investor in the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. When Edison neglected development of the phonograph, which at its inception was barely functional, Hubbard helped his son-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell, organize a competing company in 1881 that developed wax-coated cardboard cylinders and disks for used on

1500-936: The first Dictaphone . After the Volta Associates gave several demonstrations in Washington, D.C. , businessmen from Philadelphia created the American Graphophone Company on March 28, 1887, to produce and sell the machines for the budding phonograph marketplace. The Volta Graphophone Company then merged with American Graphophone, which itself later evolved into Columbia Records . The Howe Machine Factory (for sewing machines) in Bridgeport, Connecticut , became American Graphophone manufacturing plant. Tainter resided there for several months to supervise manufacturing before becoming ill, but later went on to continue his inventive work for many years. The small Bridgeport plant, which initially produced three or four machines

1550-450: The first practical telephone . From the time of Mabel's courtship with Graham Bell in 1873, until his death in 1922, Mabel became and remained the most significant influence in his life. Folklore held that Bell undertook telecommunication experiments in an attempt to restore her hearing which had been destroyed by disease close to her fifth birthday, leaving her completely deaf for the remainder of her life. Mabel Gardiner Hubbard

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1600-498: The home of her daughter Marian, in Chevy Chase, Maryland , five months later, on January 3, 1923, both of whom are buried near their home on "The Point" at their estate of Beinn Bhreagh, originally their summer residence. Her ashes were interred with Alexander's grave exactly one year, to the hour, after his burial. Today, they rest together near the top of their "beautiful mountain" of their estate overlooking Bras d'Or Lake , under

1650-440: The lateral cutting process commercially, this later became the primary method of phonograph disc recording. Bell and Tainter also developed wax-coated cardboard cylinders for their record cylinder. Edison's grooved mandrel covered with a removable sheet of tinfoil (the actual recording medium) was prone to damage during installation or removal. Tainter received a separate patent for a tube assembly machine to automatically produce

1700-558: The manual crank on Edison's Phonograph. In 1885, when the Volta Laboratory Associates were sure that they had a number of practical inventions, they filed patent applications and began to seek out investors. The Volta Graphophone Company of Alexandria, Virginia, was created on January 6, 1886, and incorporated on February 3, 1886. It formed to control the patents and to handle the commercial development of their sound recording and reproduction inventions, one of which became

1750-420: The multiple volumes of his " homenotes ". However, Hubbard strongly believed that a heavier-than-air vehicle could be designed to fly, and she provided the inspiration and financing of about $ 20,000 CAD to that end, a significant amount in 1907 (approximately $ 450,000 in 2008 dollars). At that time Hubbard sold some of her real estate and gave that amount of money to her husband and four others to establish

1800-511: The national sales rights of both the Graphophone and the Edison Speaking Phonograph. Jesse Lippincott set up a sales network of local companies to lease Phonographs and Graphophones as dictation machines. In the early 1890s Lippincott fell victim to the unit's mechanical problems and also to resistance from stenographers , resulting in the company's bankruptcy. A coin-operated version of the Graphophone, U.S. patent 506,348 ,

1850-481: The stern insistence of his fiancée and future wife. Hubbard understood Bell's reluctance to go to the exhibition and display his works. She secretly bought his train ticket to Philadelphia, packed his bag, and then took the unknowing Bell to Boston 's train station where she told her shocked fiancé that he was going on a trip. When Bell started to argue, Hubbard turned her sight away from him, thus becoming literally deaf to his protests. The Bell Telephone Company

1900-565: The then-new form of illumination. So he founded the Cambridge Gas Company, now part of NSTAR . After he moved to Washington, D.C., from Cambridge in 1873, Hubbard subdivided his large Cambridge estate. On Hubbard Park Road and Mercer Circle (Mercer was his wife's maiden name), he built large houses designed for Harvard faculty. On nearby Foster Street, he built smaller houses, still with modern amenities, for "the better class of mechanic." This neighborhood west of Harvard Square in Cambridge

1950-599: Was acquired successively by the Volta Graphophone Company, the American Graphophone Company, the North American Phonograph Company , and finally by the Columbia Phonograph Company (known today as Columbia Records ), all of which either produced or sold Graphophones. It took five years of research under the directorship of Benjamin Hulme, Harvey Christmas, Charles Sumner Tainter and Chichester Bell at

2000-621: Was admitted to the bar in 1843. He first settled in Cambridge and joined the Boston law firm of Benjamin Robbins Curtis . There he became active in local institutions. Hubbard helped establish a city water works in Cambridge, was a founder of the Cambridge Gas Co. and later organized a Cambridge to Boston trolley system. Hubbard also played a pivotal role in the founding of Clarke School for

2050-406: Was also, due in great part to her parents' efforts, one of the first deaf children in the nation to be taught to both lip-read and speak, which allowed her to integrate herself easily and almost completely within the hearing world, an event virtually unknown to those in the deaf community of that era. In support of her parents' efforts to increase funding for deaf education, Mabel testified before

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2100-543: Was appointed by President Grant to determine the proper rates for railway mail and he served as a commissioner to the Centennial Exposition . Hubbard organized the Bell Telephone Company on July 9, 1877, with himself as president, Thomas Sanders as treasurer and Bell as 'Chief Electrician'. Two days later, he became Bell's father-in-law when his daughter, Mabel Hubbard , married Bell. Gardiner Hubbard

2150-523: Was born on November 25, 1857, in Cambridge, Massachusetts , United States, to Gardiner Greene Hubbard and Gertrude Mercer McCurdy. She had a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever close to her fifth birthday in 1862 while visiting her maternal grandparents in New York City, and was thereafter left permanently and completely deaf . The disease destroyed her inner ear 's vestibular sensors , leaving her with

2200-470: Was developed by Tainter in 1893 to compete with nickel-in-the-slot entertainment phonograph U.S. patent 428,750 demonstrated in 1889 by Louis T. Glass, manager of the Pacific Phonograph Company. In 1889, the trade name Graphophone began to be utilized by Columbia Phonograph Company as the name for their version of the Phonograph. Columbia Phonograph Company, originally established by

2250-551: Was intimately connected with the Bell Telephone Company, which subsequently evolved into the National Bell Telephone Company and then the American Bell Telephone Company , merging with smaller telephone companies during its growth. The American Bell Telephone Company would, at the very end of 1899, evolve into AT&T , at times the world's largest telephone company . Hubbard has been credited as

2300-490: Was married to Lewis Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1903–1944), the son of Rutherfurd Stuyvesant , in 1925. After giving birth to a son, they divorced in 1935. Through his daughter Mabel, he was the grandfather of Elsie May Bell (1878–1964), who married Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor of National Geographic fame, Marian Hubbard "Daisy" Bell (1880–1962), who was married to David Fairchild . and two boys who died in infancy (Edward in 1881 and Robert in 1883). Through his daughter Roberta, he

2350-583: Was named after him by Robert Peary . The main school building at the Clarke School for the Deaf, Hubbard Hall, is named after him in his honor. In 1899, a new school on Kenyon Street in Washington, D.C., was named the Hubbard School in his honor as one of the "most public-spirited men of the District, never neglecting an opportunity to advance its interests, but was also a man of great learning and earnestly interested in all educational movements. Mr. Hubbard

2400-484: Was organized on July 9, 1877, by Hubbard's father Gardiner Greene Hubbard who owned 1,387 of the 5,000 issued shares and had the title of "trustee". Hubbard's husband Alexander Bell owned 1,497 shares. Bell immediately transferred all but 10 of his shares as a wedding gift to his new bride. A short time later, just prior to leaving for an extended honeymoon of Europe, Hubbard signed a power of attorney giving control of her shares to her father. This made Gardiner Hubbard

2450-620: Was the grandfather of Grace Hubbard Bell (1883–1979), who was married to Granville Roland Fortescue (1875–1952), an American soldier and Rough Rider who was the cousin of Theodore Roosevelt and son of Robert Roosevelt (born while his biological father was married to his first wife but adopted by him following her death and his marriage to his mother). Grace was the mother of three girls, Marion Fortescue, who married Daulton Gillespie Viskniskki in 1934, Thalia Fortescue Massie (1911–1963), and Kenyon Fortescue Reynolds (1914–1990), better known as actress Helene Whitney . Gardiner Hubbard's life

2500-493: Was the president of the National Geographic Society, a man prominent in science and a man of the highest character." The school has since been closed and demolished. Mabel Gardiner Hubbard Mabel Gardiner Hubbard Bell (November 25, 1857 – January 3, 1923) was an American businesswoman, and the daughter of Boston lawyer Gardiner Green Hubbard . She was the wife of Alexander Graham Bell , inventor of

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