Rare bank receipt, 7 x 2.75, filled out and signed by Bell, "A. Graham Bell," received from Thomas Sanders the sum of $87.50, December 19, 1872. Bell adds below: "for tuition to his son during the months of October, November, & December 1872." In fine condition, with scattered light creasing, and light staining to the vignette. Bell began teaching the five-year-old Georgie Sanders, who was deaf from birth, in Boston in 1872. The next year, Bell discontinued much of his teaching in order to devote his time to his scientific experiments; however, he was offered free room and board at the Sanders’ home in Salem as long as he continued to tutor the young George. George's father, Thomas Sanders, provided Bell with his own ‘experiment’ room, where he conducted some of his telegraph and telephone experiments in the evenings. In 1874, Sanders paired with Gardiner Hubbard, whose daughter was also a student of Bell’s (and who later married him), to provide the financing for every aspect of Bell’s experiments—from equipment and supplies to legal fees and assistants’ pay—in exchange for shares in any forthcoming patents. They therefore received equal interest in the patents granted for Bell’s telephone in 1876. The Bell Telephone Company was founded in 1877, and Thomas Sanders served as its first treasurer.
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