Q. Did Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone in Canada or the U.S.?
A. This question rings with controversy; if you’re an American you probably were taught the phone was invented in the U.S. and if you’re Canadian you might believe it was done here.
The answer really depends on how you define the word invention. Bell moved to Brantford, Ont. in 1870 and began experiments on how to send the human voice over a wire. He moved to Boston in 1871 to teach, but kept working on his project.
For the next three years, Bell returned to Brantford often and discussed the idea of the telephone at length with his father one night in 1874. A year later he wrote the specifications for the telephone during another visit to Brantford, but it was on March 10, 1876 in Boston that he uttered the first words over a wire “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”
Bell also placed the first one-way long distance call in Canada later that year between Brantford and Paris, Ont, about eight miles away. If that doesn’t settle your argument remember that Bell often declared that Brantford was the home of his famous invention. For example in a speech in 1909 in Ottawa, he said: “Of this you may be sure, the telephone was invented in Canada. It was made in the United States.”