General Biographical information Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He went to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871. In the United States he began teaching deaf-mutes, publicizing a system called visible speech. The system, which was made by his father, the Scottish teacher Alexander Melville Bell, shows how the lips, tongue, and throat are used in the articulation of sound. In 1872 Bell made a school for deaf and mute people, in Boston, Massachusetts. The school became part of Boston University, where Bell was a teacher of vocal physiology. He became a U.S. citizen in 1882. Since Bell was 18,