Bell did not invent telephone, US rules

Italy hailed the redress of a historic injustice yesterday after the US Congress recognised an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell.

Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci (pictured), as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death.

The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in Meucci’s homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious Scot who found fortune and fame by stealing another man’s work.

Calling the Italian’s career extraordinary and tragic, the resolution said his “teletrofono”, demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to Meucci’s materials and who took out a patent 16 years later.

“It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged,” the resolution stated.

Bell’s immortalisation in books and films has rankled with generations of Italians who know Meucci’s story. Born in 1808, he studied design and mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and as a stage technician at the city’s Teatro della Pergola developed a primitive system to help colleagues communicate.

In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by electrical impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved to Staten Island, near New York City, in 1850 to develop the technology.

When Meucci’s wife, Ester, became paralysed he rigged a system to link her bedroom with his neighbouring workshop and in 1860 held a public demonstration which was reported in New York’s Italian-language press.

In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to find financial backing, failed to master English and was severely burned in an accident aboard a steamship.

Forced to make new prototype telephones after Ester sold his machines for $6 to a secondhand shop, his models became more sophisticated. An inductor formed around an iron core in the shape of a cylinder was a technique so sophisticated that it was used decades later for long-distance connections.

Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his “talking telegraph” so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew it.

He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union.

Meucci sued and was nearing victory – the supreme court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell – when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.

Yesterday the newspaper La Repubblica welcomed the vote to recognise the Tuscan inventor as a belated comeuppance for Bell, a “cunning Scotsman” and “usurper” whose per- fidy built a communications empire.

See more here theguardian

Editor’s note: Meucci having invented the telephone was used as a plot device in the 3rd Godfather film in 1990, when Joe Zasa brings a gold telephone to Micheal Corleone in honour of Meucci’s invention.

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Comments (6)

  • Avatar

    VOWG

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    and that would be important because?

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Allan Shelton

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      Dishonesty needs to be rectified and exposed.

      Reply

      • Avatar

        VOWG

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        I had nothing to do with slavery, should I be vilified? You have no idea what happened then.

        Reply

  • Avatar

    Joseph Olson

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    This Alex Bell theft allowed Rockefeller creation of the AT&T monopoly, a pattern of Intellicetual Property theft and history fraud repeated frequently. Owen Stevens and I discuss PATENT THEFT on WEBR 1440 AM last night. Being the best liars and the best thieves makes you “elite” on this planet

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Lorraine

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      He who owns the patent controls the technology. Financial gain is only part of the benefit. Any technical advancement can be used for good or evil intentions. Individuals who control development of future applications are capable of promoting agendas through their invention.

      Reply

    • Avatar

      Jerry Krause

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      Hi Joseph and Lorraine,

      Lorraine, you stated: “He who owns the patent controls the technology.”

      I know very little about the patent process. However, I met an inventor in 1984 or 1985 who had a patent on a tape which adhered strongly to a painted vertical wall so that heavy objects could be hung from it. But if one pulled the tape horizontally away from the wall the paint would not be peeled from the wall. He had used adhesives made by 3M. But for some reason 3M would not partner with him.

      Now I have read that the Wright Bros would not share some critical information, not included in their patents with either the government or a private company. For they did not trust they would be treated fairly (honestly). And they did not have the reassures and experience to further develop (improve) their plane to it full potential.

      So back to the case of this inventor I met, 3M, knowing what could be done with their adhesives, discovered the inventor’s secret and waited until his also necessary patent expired. I forget this 3M product’s present name; but I am not going to make the effort to what you, or a reader, are perfectly able to do yourselves.

      Have a good day, Jerry

      Reply

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