1880
The National Bell Telephone Company becomes the American Bell Telephone Company.February 15 Marian (Daisy) Bell, a daughter, is born.
Bell and his young associate, Charles Sumner Tainter, invent the photophone, an apparatus that transmits sound through light.
Fall The French government awards the Volta Prize for scientific achievement in electricity to Alexander Graham Bell. He uses the prize money to set up the Volta Laboratory as a permanent, self-supporting experimental laboratory devoted to invention.
1881
At the Volta Laboratory, Bell, his cousin, Chichester Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter invent a wax cylinder for Thomas Edison's phonograph.July-August When President Garfield is shot, Bell attempts unsuccessfully to locate the bullet inside his body by using an electromagnetic device called an induction balance (metal detector).
August 15 Death in infancy of Bell's son, Edward (b. 1881).
1882
November Bell is granted American citizenship.1883
At Scott Circle in Washington, D.C., Bell starts a day school for deaf children.Alexander Graham Bell is elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
With Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell funds the publication of Science, a journal that would communicate new research to the American scientific community.
November 17 Death in infancy of Bell's son, Robert (b. 1883).
1885
March 3 The American Telephone & Telegraph Company is formed to manage the expanding long-distance business of the American Bell Telephone Company.1886
Bell establishes the Volta Bureau as a center for studies on the deaf.Summer Bell begins buying land on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. There he eventually builds his summer home, Beinn Bhreagh.
