Bell Telephone Company local phone companies. In 2005, AT&T would later be acquired by one of its former local phone companies SBC Communications which became the "New AT&T". In 1906 the citizens of the City of Brantford, Ontario, Canada and its surrounding area formed the Bell Memorial Association to commemorate the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in July 1874 at his parent's home, Melville House, near Brantford. Walter Allward's design was the unanimous choice from among 10 submitted models, winning the competition. The memorial was planned to be completed by 191 but Allward did not finish it until five years
Alexander Graham Bell by the villagers as "their own". The Bells were still in residence at "Beinn Bhreagh" when the Halifax Explosion occurred on December 6, 1917. Mabel and Bell mobilized the community to help victims in Halifax. Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied. According to one of his biographers, Charlotte Gray, Bell's work ranged "unfettered across the scientific landscape" and he often went to bed voraciously reading the "Encyclopædia Britannica", scouring it for new areas of interest. The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by