David Charles Bell

David Charles, Professor of English Literature and Elocution, had previously taught at Trinity College Dublin,[4] where one of his students was playwright George Bernard Shaw, whom he later introduced to Melville.

Shaw, under Melville's influence was inspired to write the play Pygmalion (which spawned the musical production and movie My Fair Lady and refers directly to "Bell's Visible Speech"), and also became a life-long advocate of phonetic transcription —leaving a large part of his estate to the development of a "fonetic alfabet".

[7][8] The young inventor, positioned at the A. Wallis Ellis store in the neighbouring community of Mount Pleasant,[7][9] listened to his uncle's voice emanating from his receiver housed in a metal box.

In October 1864, Fenian "headquarters" in New York notified members of a lecture tour by David Bell from Ireland, anticipating that it would "have the most stirring and beneficial effect."

He quotes from a "letter from prison" to his brother Melville in which David Charles expresses ardent Irish nationalist sympathies: "I must bear it, still, however, looking forward to the proud watchwords--Ireland!