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,
Alexander Graham Bell and served as its president from 1891–92. Bell was later awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in 1914 "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone". The "bel" (B) and the smaller "decibel" (dB) are units of measurement of power level invented by Bell Labs and named after him. Since 1976, the IEEE's Alexander Graham Bell Medal has been awarded to honor outstanding contributions in the field of telecommunications. In 1936, the US Patent Office declared Bell first on its list of the country's greatest inventors, leading to the US Post Office issuing a commemorative stamp honoring Bell in 1940