We are living in a transformative time and to highlight that each month, we’ll introduce you to men and women who invented or created a new technology or business model that was revolutionary and that has shaped our current reality. Their stories start here, and continue by following the link. We hope you join us in being stimulated by these stories to take your own transformative or revolutionary approach to the home financing business! -James K. O’Donnell, President

One of the most important inventors responsible for the transformation of our world is Alexander Graham Bell. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. A child prodigy, Bell’s first invention was a machine that removed the hard outer husk from wheat so it could be processed into flour. Bell was 12 years old.

In 1874 the U.S. was crisscrossed with telegraph wires. Bell believed that the telegraph could be replaced with what he called his “harmonic telegraph.” Bell’s invention would expand this “nervous system of commerce” as William Orton, President of Western Union described it by replacing Morse code with the human voice.

At the same time Bell was developing his telephone, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci was working on a similar invention. After Meucci and Bell briefly shared a laboratory, Bell introduced his telephone, Meucci sued claiming it was his invention. Fortunately for Bell, Meucci died in 1889 before his case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Combining technologies developed by Meucci, himself, and inventor Elisha Gray, Bell and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, made the first telephone call on March 10, 1876. Bell called to Watson in the next room.  “Mr. Watson — Come here - I want to see you.” These were the first intelligible words spoken over the telephone.

The Bell Telephone Company opened its doors in 1877. In that same year, Bell made the first transcontinental phone call from New York to San Francisco. By 1886 more than 150,000 people had a telephone in their home. Bell offered to sell his patent for the telephone to Western Union for $100,000. Insisting the telephone was nothing more than a toy Western Union declined the offer. Orton, later told a colleagues that he’d be willing to pay $25 million dollars for Bell’s patent. By then Bell and his investors had no desire to sell and the telephone quickly replaced the telegraph connecting people around the world.