During trip earlier this month to Nova Scotia, I visited Baddeck, Alexander Graham Bell's summer refuge from the heat and humidity of Washington, DC for the last 37 years of his life. Interestingly the estate is still (privately) occupied by descendants, including his 101-year old granddaughter. However, the highlight was to visit the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, a Parks Canada museum of his trials and experimentation.

From the era of the Voice 0.1 Manifesto and pre-Skype Certification: Just send me the voice -- not exactly your average Nokia N91! Oh, and definitely not suitable for SkypeIn or SkypeOut.

Definitely worth a visit for anyone keen on the history of the telephone; Alexander Graham Bell was the original technogeek often working late into the night, applying his curiosity and energy to not only telephony but also avionics, air conditioning, marine engineering and structural design. Some interesting notes that we can relate to in this era of telephony's evolution into the VoIP age:

• He was effectively trained as a speech therapist following in his father's and grandfather's profession of teaching the deaf; his father's work with a phonetic alphabet, where each sound is represented by a character, triggered his interest in developing the telephone. But what are codecs and Internet packets but ad hoc "phonetic" codes for the coding/decoding and transmission of sound?
• While applying for his original telephone concept patent in 1875, a year prior to the first actual telephone call, he spent a good part of the next 18 years in the courts defending his patents -- successfully.