ALS signed “A. Graham Bell,” one page, 5.25 x 8.25, Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes letterhead, March 6, 1872. Handwritten letter to Charles Perkins, secretary of the Social Science Association in Boston, Massachusetts, in full: “I shall be pleased to know what you decide upon concerning the illustration. I shall be happy to purchase two hundred copies of the article on Visible Speech—if you will kindly let me have them in a pamphlet form.” In fine condition.



Visible Speech is a system of written symbols that represent sounds capable of being made by the human voice. This system, which can be used with not only English, but also with foreign and obscure languages, was developed by Alexander Melville Bell, father of Alexander Graham Bell, and became popular with the publication of the latter's book ‘Visible Speech’ in 1867. A. Melville Bell developed the Visible Speech system with the intent that it could aid deaf students in learning to speak through teachers trained in this system. He was invited to provide training to teachers at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, but declined and offered his son's services instead, who had begun assisting his father with research and during various tours. Alexander Graham Bell began teaching his father's system upon his arrival in Boston in April 1871, and by March-June 1872, he was providing the same training to teachers at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Mass., and the American Asylum for the Deaf in Hartford, Conn. In 1874, Bell began printing the ‘Visible Speech Pioneer,’ a periodic publication that provided helpful information to various institutes for the deaf.