Beyond the telephone: Bell on Cape Breton

Bell had personal reasons for undertaking the experiments that led to his telephone: His mother and his wife were deaf, and he himself had impaired hearing. As a teacher of the deaf, Bell directed the teaching of Helen Keller, and the methods of communication and teaching he helped evolve have been vital to deaf people the world over.

But Bell had one major passion that eclipsed all his other interests: flight. He started with kites – big, elaborate ones. The townsfolk saw such craft soaring above Beinn Breagh as sheer folly. Imagine, a grown man flying kites all day! Then one cold February the peace of the village was broken by the roar of an engine, and everyone turned to the frozen bay to witness the first powered flight in the British Empire.

It was just after the Wright Brothers' triumph with powered flight. Bell's "Silver Dart" was a gangly contraption of fabric wings, wires, and wheels that flew a distance of half a mile at an altitude of 30 feet, piloted by an accomplice of Bell's, J.A.D. McCurdy.

The airplane had been designed and built by a group of fellow flight fanatics including McCurdy, a US Army officer named Thomas Selfridge, University of Toronto graduate Frederick Baldwin, and a motorcycle manufacturer, Glenn Curtiss. They formed a company to produce airplanes like the Silver Dart.

But the first production model, Baddeck 1, and the Silver Dart crashed before an audience of journalists, destroying public confidence in the flying machines.

Soon after, the men launched another pet project – hydrofoils.

Their first boat, the HD-1, a cigar-shaped vessel that rode above the water on a series of fins, was driven across the bay in December 1911, at a speed of 30 m.p.h. Seven years later, the much improved HD-4 was launched, and in 1919 reached the speed of 70.86 m.p.h., making it the fastest boat of its day.

The Canadian military showed interest in the hydrofoils, but decided against them, and since there was no other market for the craft, the enterprise died. The HD-4 was beached and left to rot.

The main hall of the Bell Museum is built on the basis of the tetrahedron, the structure that Bell used to provide maximum structural strength with minimum weight to his flying and cruising craft. It houses artifacts, models, and remaining pieces of aircraft and boats. It also contains countless documents and, thanks to Bell's interest in photography, hundreds of excellent photographs that vividly re-create his life on Beinn Breagh.

Two separate wings house a life-size replica of the HD-4, along with the weathered remains of the original, plus a full-size reconstruction of the Silver Dart.

• For information on Cape Breton Island and the Bell National Historic Site, visit www.pebretonisland.com/AGBell.html and www.capebretonisland.com.

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