Alexander Graham Bell, renowned for his invention of the telephone, was born in Scotland in 1847. His father and grandfather had been authorities in speech training, and his mother was deaf, so it is not surprising that Bell would devote his life to devising teaching methods for speech defects and improving acoustic communications. On May 10, 1870, he wrote to Isaac L. Peet, principal of the New York School for the Deaf and Dumb, in New York City, applying for a position as “professor of articulation.” Professor Peet apparently filed the letter away and forgot about it, since Bell was not hired.

This letter is an interesting item in the records of the New York School for the Deaf, as the institution is now known. The school, founded in 1817 and the second oldest school for the deaf in America, moved from New York City to the town of Greenburgh in 1939. The extensive records of the school provide a rich source for the study of education of the deaf.