Bell Canada Alexander Graham Bell, providing stovepipe wire with which Bell conducted his early telephone experiments from his father's home in Tutelo Heights, Ontario, and also building some 2,398 telephones to Bell's specifications for the Canadian market until James Cowherd's untimely death from tuberculosis in 1881. With a government-granted monopoly on Canadian long-distance telephone service, The Bell Telephone Company of Canada was serving 237,000 subscribers by 1914. Since its early years The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd. had been known colloquially as "The Bell" or "Bell Telephone". On March 7, 1968, Canadian federal legislation renamed The Bell Telephone Company of Canada,
Joseph Dixon (inventor) Joseph Dixon (inventor) Joseph Dixon (1799–1869) was an inventor, entrepreneur and the founder of what became the Dixon Ticonderoga Company, a well-known manufacturer of pencils in the United States. His fascination with new technologies led to many innovations such as a mirror for a camera that was the forerunner of the viewfinder, a patented double-crank steam engine, and a method of printing banknotes to thwart counterfeiters. Most notably, Dixon manufactured the first wood and graphite pencil in the country. Among his associates were such American inventors as Robert Fulton, Samuel Morse, and Alexander Graham Bell, and politician/business partner Orestes Cleveland.