In 1877, Bell travelled to England with his wife Mabel, the same year in which he established the Bell Telephone Company. Bell’s mother was deaf and his father invented visible speech, or signing. In 1866, Bell carried out a series of experiments combining the notes of electrically-driven tuning forks to make vowel sounds, giving him the idea of telegraphing speech.

In September of that year, Bell attended the annual conference of the Iron and Steel Industry of Great Britain, which was held at Newcastle Town Hall. He demonstrated his early telephones there and was approached by John Bell Simpson, the mining engineer. An experiment at Addison pit was arranged for September 20.

Bell on one end of the line in Hedgefield House, Stella Road, Ryton sang Auld Lang Syne On the other, down the mine five hundred yards away, a group of workers heard the sound, muted but audible. There followed God Save the Queen, The Last Rose of Summer, and a quick piano recital. John Bell Simpson recorded: ‘Conversations were kept up quite easily. The mouth of the speaker at one end and the ear of the listener at the other required to be closely applied to the instrument at each end. There can be no doubt, from the experiments of today, that the telephone promises to be capable of useful application in mines for many purposes and will, on the surface as well as underground, be of immense use."