Aleck Bell lived in the old city of Edinburgh during the reign of Queen Victoria. It was a nice place to grow up in. Something interesting was always going on and the boys had fun on holidays like Halloween and the time the Queen came to visit the city. Aleck and his brothers always wanted to see the Queen. Finally Aleck not only saw her but had a chance to talk with her!

He knew plenty of things to interest even a queen, though he was just a little boy in a red tam-o"-shanter. He belonged to an interesting family. They all studied speech and the different kinds of sound. Aleck though sound was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Mr. Bell taught deaf people to learn to speak properly. Aleck meant to teach the deaf, too, when he grew up. He wanted to invent a machine to help them to hear. Aleck was always working on inventions. He and his brother Melville had a lot of fun with a "talking machine" they made. And once Aleck taught a dog to speak!

Aleck had a trade-mark, too, a little blue bell to stand for his name. He meant to put it on all his inventions, so everyone would know that Alexander Graham Bell had been the ingenious one.

Once a gypsy read Aleck's palm and predicted that he would sail far over the sea and win fame and fortune. "Heaps of shining gold are waiting for you in a foreign land," she told him.

Aleck laughed at that. It sounded splendid, but quite impossible. How could a boy who had a hard time with his lessons ever hope to make heaps of gold? And why should he want to leave his native country?

But the gypsy proved to be right. Everyone now knows why the little blue bell is famous.The Bells moved to Canada, and then young Aleck went to the United States to make his fortune. He worked on the machine to help deaf people hear—but instead he discovered the telephone! He was the first person to find the way speech could be sent across miles of space and even across continents and oceans. Aleck Bell's telephone came into countless homes and buildings. It was a great contribution of American life and to the world, and it did bring him fame and heaps of gold.

This is Mabel Cleland Widdemer's second book for the Childhood of Famous Americans series, for which she wrote the story of Washington Irving, one of America's great storytellers. Her book about the little Scotch boy who became an inventor America is proud to claim follows closely the interesting facts of Bell's life, to make a unique and important addition to the series. 

From the dust jacket