Yesterday I posted a photo from National Geographic's new Tumblr feed showing Alexander Graham Bell leaning in to kiss a woman who was holding herself inside one of his iconic tetrahedral kite frames. Both the National Geographic and I identified the women as Bell's wife, Mabel Gardiner Hubbard. Not so, writes Contrarian reader Donna Johnson, who works at the Bell Museum* in Baddeck: This is one of my favourite photos. Also a favourite of the visitors, who are sometimes a bit disappointed when we point out that, contrary to popular opinion, this is actually Bell kissing his daughter Daisy, not Mabel. If you...

TheAtlantic.com's tech columnist Alexis Madrigal marked the 135th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell's US patent for the telephone by reproducing a doodle-like drawing of the device Bell submitted with his patent application: That's a fragment; see the whole diagram here. Madrigal found the image among Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, which are stored at the Library of Congress and available online in a searchable database. Naturally, that set Contrarian searching for terms like "Telegraph House" (9 hits), "Beinn Bhreagh" (100), "Ross Ferry" and "Kempt Head" (zip and zip). A search for "Sydney" produced 47 hits, including this remarkable letter to...