A Tough Call On The Inventor Of The Telephone
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 07:49PM 
The history books will tell you that Alexander Graham Bell of Scotland invented the telephone. Alexander Bell won a patent dispute which would lead to the most valuable patent ever issued, the telephone. The patent on the telephone and the subsequent success of the device would lead to the creation of the world's largest monopoly, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Consider that for over a century, ATT, was referred to in our culture by the name of "Ma Bell" after the inventor of the device.
In fact, the first telephone call was on March 10, 1876 and the anniversary of that day is now only a few days away. The first telephone call has often been recreated in writing and in the movies. The first telephone call is sometimes recreated with Alexander Bell crying out "Watson, come here! I want to see you!" with Watson answering the call. That first telephone call is a well known part of American history and lore. The story would later be popularized by Hollywood when actor Don Amiche played the part of Alexander Graham Bell in a movie.
However, this nice, classic, Hollywood story about American history and the invention of the telephone overlooks the likely fact that Alexander Bell stole the entire telephone concept and its resulting patent from at least two other inventors. The reality is that the American telephone monopoly known as "Ma Bell" should really have been known as "Ma Grey" or "Ma Meucci".
An early version of the telephone was invented around 1860 by Antonio Meucci who called it Teletrofono. In 1860, Meucci organized a demonstration of a successful telephone in which a singer's voice was clearly heard by spectators a considerable distance away. The fact is that Meucci filed his first notice to take out a telephone patent in 1871, five years before Alexander Graham Bell's now infamous first telephone call.
Sadly, Meucci would eventually be cheated out of his invention. The sordid story includes "lost" Meucci filings by the United States patent office. The Meucci telephone device was also "lost" by Western Union as the inventor was trying to demonstrate the possibilities of his invention to them. Later investigation would produce evidence of illegal relationships linking certain employees of the Patent Office and officials of Alexander Bell's company. Eventually, in the course of litigation between Bell and Western Union, it was revealed that Bell had agreed to pay Western Union 20 percent of profits from commercialization of his "invention" for a period of 17 years. Certainly, conspiracy theorists would have a field day with this evidence.
Despite a public statement by the Secretary of State of the time that "there exists sufficient proof to give priority to Meucci in the invention of the telephone," and despite the fact that the United States initiated prosecution for fraud against Bell's patent, the actual trial was postponed every year until the death of Antonio Meucci in 1896. The government’s fraud case against Alexander Bell would eventually be dropped, securing Alexander Graham Bell's place in history as the inventor of the telephone.
Elisha Grey was another apparent victim of Alexander Bell. In Seth Shulman’s recent book, entitled “The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret”, Seth Shulman tells a story of shady lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner. The book describes Bell's dishonesty in securing the telephone patent as follows: “Bell furtively and illegally copied part of Elisha Gray's invention in the race to secure what would become the most valuable U.S. patent ever issued. And afterward, as Bell's device led to fame, he hid his invention's illicit beginnings.”
Over the years, the Bell Telephone Company would fight five lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court as well as five hundred and eighty eight lawsuits that posed various legal challenges over the rights to the telephone. It never lost a major case. However, over the years, the evidence has continued to increase that Alexander Graham Bell used his wealth and influence to illegally claim the right to the patent of the telephone and to be called its inventor.
On September 25, 2001, the United States House of Representatives through Resolution 269, recognized Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone. The House Resolution reads, "that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged."
The invention of the telephone is a murky tale of fraud, dishonesty, and corruption. Alexander Graham Bell used his wealth and political influence to secure the rights to a device that would change the world. In retrospect, both Antonio Meucci and Elisha Grey were victims of a long, sordid, costly legal process. The evidence now suggests that justice was not well served for either of these men. That's why even on its one hundred and thirty second anniversary, its still a tough call to recognize the real inventor of the telephone.
Reader Comments (1)
According to Mark Twain: "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated". Similarly, rumors of Alexander Graham Bell's demise in the primacy of the invention of the telephone has also been greatly exaggerated, for several reasons:
Bell vs. Elisha Gray:
Many people have, for a long time, contended that Elisha Gray beat Bell to the patent office, and that the nefarious Bell paid off staff to be allowed to copy Gray's text and process his application first. That's a great story, worthy of a Hollywood who-dunit, only: Bell was not in Washington on the day Gray processed his application at the Patent Office. At the very most, if there was any copying, it was likely done by legal staff working for Bell's father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, almost certainly without Bell's complicity (the telephone system did not then exist; no one could pick up a telephone to call Bell to discuss it with him).
More importantly, the item that was copied by said person, a transmitter (microphone) design, was irrelevant to Bell's patent application for two reasons: a) Bell already had a working microphone, based on electromagnetics (inferior to Gray's design, but still functional), and more important: b) Bell filed for a full patent application for the full telephone design, while Elisha Gray only filed a 'patent caveat', which was a caution that he was working on an invention, not that he had invented anything. Further, Gray's caveat did not specify a functional receiver design, because he didn't have one, and didn't know how to make one. If Bell's application had been filed the week after Gray's, it would have been reviewed against Gray's for similarity and would likely have received a patent award, since Gray had not specified a functional receiver. How can you have a telephone without a receiver? You can't, ergo Bell had a functional phone (even with an electromagnetic transmitter), while Gray had at best a 'proposal' for the design for a microphone, with no way for anyone to listen to what was being said on the microphone. That's not a telephone, hence the belief that Bell would have been awarded his full patent, after a Patent Office review, in any event.
For more information on this, see this article from the Fall 2008 edition (Vol.23 Iss.3) of American Heritage's Invention & Technology magazine, which unfortunately is not yet viewable online. The page 14 article, titled "THE BELL-GRAY CONTROVERSY" (with an alternate title of "Controversy over the World's Most Lucrative Patent" on the contents page) was issued not long after "The Telephone Gambit" came out. The three page article by physicist Ralph Meyer and Prof. W. Bernard Carlson, both telephone historians, demolishes most aspects of the Gambit's criticisms of the Bell patent.
Now, come to:
Bell vs. Antonio Meucci:
Meucci advocates have presented volumes of literature purporting to show his primacy in the invention of the telephone going back to approx. 1860. Additionally, in 2002 the U.S. House of Representatives published a ceremonial resolution "acknowledging Meucci's contributions *in* the invention of the telephone", NOT " *for* the invention of the telephone" (it had no legal or other effect on any of Bell's patents nor his estate's assets, and was ostensibly a political gesture to the US-Italian community).
The resolution was flawed with several outright falsifications of fact as can be seen in a number of articles which provided critical analysises of both the congressional resolution, and also the Canadian parliamentary motion (resolution) which mooted it the same month.
Numerous Meucci critics have noted that the device Meucci described on his original 'patent caveat' of December 1871, (not 'patent application'), was so basic as to represent the ancient lover's (non-electric) telephone composed of tin cans and string (or wire as was used in his version). No scientist has ever been able to reproduce electric telephony using his device as he proposed it in his patent caveat, which was never contested by the Patent Office at the time of its submission because it was a 'caveat', not a 'patent application'. Patent applications required a high level of technical documentation able to support their claims, while a 'patent caveat' was only a document that warned the patent office that someone was working on a 'potential' invention, not a document supporting claims that a device had actually been invented. Many people have confused the two documents when supporting both Meucci and Gray.
Numerous claims (based on documents and testimony produced after Bell's 1876 patent) were made to support Meucci's supposed invention of the electric telephone; however they were tossed out by the courts as being unsupported and nonsensical. When Meucci testified in his own defence, he could not even explain to the court (at that time, several years after Bell's invention had been patented) how an electric telephone even worked. More importantly, he had no supporting pre-1876 evidence to show that he had ever created a practical, functional, electric telephone (as we know it).
That remains the same situation today. Numerous claims have been made of Meucci's brilliance and accomplishments, however there exists no 'prima facia' evidence supporting his claims to an electric telephone prior to 1876. What he created and documented after 1876 (including his 'recreated' drawings) was, of course, wholly irrelevant to the debate over the priority of the invention of the telephone.
Reader's should also know that Meucci was hired by the Globe Telephone Company, an upstart competitor that tried to sell duplicates of Bell's telephones, for which reason they sought to invalidate Bell's patent based on Meucci being able to prove that he had invented an electric telephone prior to 1876, something he was unable to do before the courts.
That court decision was highly critical of both The Globe Telephone Co. and Meucci, and naturally ruled in Bell's favour. Note also that the American Bell Telephone Company at that time was a small organization with modest resources at trial, not the conglomerate AT&T that came many years later. In many respects, the Globe Telephone Company was likely a larger and better funded organization than Bell's, so it would also be inaccurate to say that Bell 'outlawyered' Meucci.