Alexander Graham Bell
lorenetworking
The teacher of the deaf whose 1876 patent on transmitting speech electrically created the network that every later one was built on top of.
The telephone matters here for an unglamorous reason: it produced the wires. Decades of digital communication ran over a plant built for voice, which is why modems, leased lines and the first broadband all had to work within constraints set by a nineteenth-century speech circuit. His work with deaf students is what led him to the mechanics of speech and hearing in the first place - the machine came out of teaching rather than out of telegraphy. His name is now attached to the medal given for contributions to communications engineering, which several people in this catalogue have received.
Also known as: alexander bell, graham bell, telephone