Google, Alexander Graham Bell and Antonio Meucci

[Deetee]

I see today that Google are celebrating Alexander Graham Bell's "invention" of the telephone.

Except he never invented it.
That honour goes to Antonio Meucci, whose work predates Bell's and who was unfortunately too poor to be able to maintain the patent on his device. He built prototypes of the telephone, which were mysteriously lost by the Vice President of the Telegraph company that Meucci submitted his work to.

Bell, who had knowledge of Meucci's work, sight of his patents (and some argue also had access to Meucci's "lost" prototypes), subsequently "invented" the telephone.

In 2002, the US House of Representatives belatedly acknowledged Meucci's invention.

 

[Blue Wode]

Perhaps Sweet should have added another verse or two to its 70’s hit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu1ZRL5tdMc

Wouldn’t be quite the same though.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

From watching QI, I have come to the conclusion that if someone is famous for inventing or discovering something, they probably didn't.

 

[dogjones]

Carmela: “Did you know that an Italian invented the telephone?”

A.J.: “Alexander Graham Bell was Italian?”

Tony: “You see? Antonio Meucci invented the telephone and he got robbed! Everybody knows that.”

 

[cloudshipsrule]

It's not so cut and dry....

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Antonio_Meucci.htm

 

[Gravy]

I see today that Google are celebrating Alexander Graham Bell's "invention" of the telephone.

Except he never invented it.
That honour goes to Antonio Meucci, whose work predates Bell's and who was unfortunately too poor to be able to maintain the patent on his device.

No. While Meucci applied for and received patents for unrelated inventions at the same time as he was working on the telephone, he neither applied for nor received telephone patents, and there is no evidence that he had built a working device. Bell's work is extensively documented. While claims that Bell invented the telephone aren't wholly accurate, he did patent his device first, and it worked. Meucci's achievements and problems have been exaggerated by Staten Island politicians eager to find something about their borough to be proud of. Perhaps others should be more famous for their work on the telephone, but Bell shouldn't be less famous for his.

From your Wiki link:

On July 19th 1887, the judge William J. Wallace (Circuit Court, S. D. New York.) concluded : "The experiments and invention of one Antonio Meucci, relating to the transmission of speech by an electrical apparatus, for which invention a caveat was filed in the United States patent‑office, December 28, 1871, renewed in December, 1882, and again in December, 1883, do not contain any such elements of an electric speaking telephone as would give the same priority over or interfere with the said Bell patent."[2] The judge concluded that Meucci was deliberately involved in attempts to defraud investors.

...However, many modern scholars outside of Italy do not recognize the claims that Meucci's device had any bearing on the development of the telephone. Tomas Farley also writes that, "Nearly every scholar agrees that Bell and Watson were the first to transmit intelligible speech by electrical means."

From the 1887 judgment against Meucci:
"It is sufficient to say that the application does not describe any of the elements, of an electric speaking telephone. Its opening statement refutes the possibility that Meucci understood the principle of that invention.

...The application does, however, describe a mechanical telephone, consisting of a mouth-piece and ear-piece connected by a wire."

That's the "cans and string" device we all know.

Edit: cloudshiprule's link covers the issue pretty well.

 

[Deetee]

No. While Meucci applied for and received patents for unrelated inventions at the same time as he was working on the telephone, he neither applied for nor received telephone patents, and there is no evidence that he had built a working device. Bell's work is extensively documented. While claims that Bell invented the telephone aren't wholly accurate, he did patent his device first, and it worked. Meucci's achievements and problems have been exaggerated by Staten Island politicians eager to find something about their borough to be proud of. Perhaps others should be more famous for their work on the telephone, but Bell shouldn't be less famous for his.

From your Wiki link:
That's the "cans and string" device we all know.

Edit: cloudshiprule's link covers the issue pretty well.

A circuit court judgement against a penniless Italian who could hardly speak English and could not afford a lawyer?

You are right, cloudshiprule's link does cover it:

He was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay his way through the patent application process, and thus had to settle for a caveat, a one year renewable notice of an impending patent, which was first filed on December 28, 1871. Meucci later learned that the Western Union affiliate laboratory reportedly lost his working models, and Meucci, who at this point was living on public assistance, was unable to renew the caveat after 1874.
In March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, who conducted experiments in the same laboratory where Meucci's materials had been stored, was granted a patent and was thereafter credited with inventing the telephone. On January 13, 1887, the Government of the United States moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation, a case that the Supreme Court found viable and remanded for trial. Meucci died in October 1889, the Bell patent expired in January 1893, and the case was discontinued as moot without ever reaching the underlying issue of the true inventor of the telephone entitled to the patent. Finally, if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell.

From the Wiki link I gave and which you referred to:

In August 1870, Meucci obtained transmission of articulate human voice at a mile distance by using as a conductor a copper plait insulated by cotton. He called his device "telettrofono". According to an Affidavit of lawyer Michael Lemmi drawings and notes by Antonio Meucci dated September 27, 1870 show that Meucci understood inductive loading on long distance telephone lines 30 years before any other scientists. The painting made by Nestore Corradi in 1858 mentions the sentence "Electric current from the inductor pipe".

Cans and string?

 

[shadron]

Have him get in line:

Farnsworth - the TV (vs Sarnoff)
Armstrong - the grid vacuum tube (pentode), superregen and superhet detection circuits, FM radio (vs deForest and Sarnoff)
Wallace - *almost* made it against Darwin, but stopped to get his analysis vetted by...Darwin (to his credit, Darwin, who had been contemplating publishing for the previous 20 years, co-credited Wallace in the final submission).

I'm sure people here can supply lots more.

 

[XBoxWarrior]

I was pretty sure I "invented" the "remote" control back in the 60's as a child....sure it only involved a long stick to change the channels from my bed, but it was remote.

If only my parents would have listened.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Radio, especially the transmission of voice over radio. Marconi gets all the credit for inventing radio, but I understand he used it only to send Morse code. Reginald Fessenden invented most of the equipment needed to send voice over the air.

His legacy to radio include three of his most notable achievements: the first audio transmission by radio (1900), the first two-way transatlantic radio transmission (1906), and the first radio broadcast of entertainment and music (1906).

 

[tkingdoll]

I invented sprouts. No-one's ever thanked me

 

[Gravy]

A circuit court judgement against a penniless Italian who could hardly speak English and could not afford a lawyer?

He had a lawyer. The claim that he couldn't afford the fee for a patent application is nonsense. He filed for and received patents for several inventions during the same period. If he thought he had a viable telephone invention during those years, why didn't he file?

Your bolded bits:

reportedly lost his working models

Hearsay.

In March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, who conducted experiments in the same laboratory where Meucci's materials had been stored,

When did Bell work there? When were Meucci's materials stored there? What relationship do Meucci's discoveries have to Bell's patent?

Finally, if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell.

So says the noted electrical engineer, Congressman Vito Fosella of Staten Island.

The court disagreed, and said Meucci's patent caveat had no relationship to Bell's patent. Do you really think someone who believed he had such an important invention couldn't raise $10 from the large Italian-American community, whereas he was able to raise far more money to patent his other inventions, such as:

• U.S. Patent 122,478 1872 - improved method of manufacturing effervescent drinks from fruits
• U.S. Patent 142,071 1873 - improvement in sauces for food
• U.S. Patent 168,273 1875 - method of testing milk
• U.S. Patent 183,062 1876 - hygrometer

From the Wiki link I gave and which you referred to:
In August 1870, Meucci obtained transmission of articulate human voice at a mile distance by using as a conductor a copper plait insulated by cotton. He called his device "telettrofono".

You're welcome to take his word for it, and that this was an electric telephone. I don't, and neither did the court.

According to an Affidavit of lawyer Michael Lemmi drawings and notes by Antonio Meucci dated September 27, 1870 show that Meucci understood inductive loading on long distance telephone lines 30 years before any other scientists.

The affidavit based on a notebook that was dated before the company which produced it existed?

Cans and string?

Yes. Telephone? No. I don't think I've seen any historians who weren't Italian promote Meucci's story as credible.

Over a period of 18 years, the Bell Telephone Company faced over 600 litigations from inventors claiming to have invented the telephone, never once losing a case. Bell's laboratory notes and family letters were the key to establishing a long lineage to his experiments.[73] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell#Competitors

 

[shadron]

I invented sprouts. No-one's ever thanked me

They be from Brussels, there's no wonder.

 

[Deetee]

He had a lawyer. The claim that he couldn't afford the fee for a patent application is nonsense. He filed for and received patents for several inventions during the same period. If he thought he had a viable telephone invention during those years, why didn't he file?

I don't know. He was undoubtedly very poor and this has been suggested as the most likely reason.

In "Black bodies and quantum cats", the book by Jennifer Oulette, she says this:
"When Meucci was severely burned in a steamship explosion, his wife sold his prototype and several other models to a second hand dealer for $6. Meucci sought to recover the items, only to be told they had been sold to an unknown young man. He reconstructed the telephone prototype, and although he could not afford the $250 patent fee, he submitted a notice of intent on 28th December 1871."

"Meucci even went so far as to deliver one of his models with accompanying technical details to the Vice President of one of the Western Union Telegraph's affiliates." For a period of 2 years Meucci pestered him about the development of his invention. Finally in 1874, "fed up of being given the run around, Meucci demanded the return of his prototype, only to be told it had been lost"

Following Bell's patent application, Meucci discovered that all the prior documentation he had placed with the patent office had also been "lost". Oulette says that "historians now suspect there were illegal relationships between employees of the U.S. Patent Office and Bell's company."
This may well be speculative - in her book she doesn't give a specific references for this statement.

Your bolded bits:
Hearsay.

When did Bell work there? When were Meucci's materials stored there? What relationship do Meucci's discoveries have to Bell's patent?

I cannot personally vouch for the veracity of the Wiki information on this. If it is incorrect or hearsay, perhaps you could edit the wiki pages on this, so no-one else is misled?

I don't have a particular axe to grind here. I am just pointing out that an impoverished Italian, up against the considerable clout of Bell's company who were being bankrolled by vested interests and Bell's wealthy father in law, never stood a chance of having his contribution recognised.

 

[Deetee]

Radio, especially the transmission of voice over radio. Marconi gets all the credit for inventing radio, but I understand he used it only to send Morse code. Reginald Fessenden invented most of the equipment needed to send voice over the air.

Quite agree - Marconi never invented radio.
(see - I am not just pro-Italian)

But wasn't it actually invented by Tesla, not Fessenden?

 

[Blue Mountain]

From reading on bedrock-reliable Wikipedia , it appears Tesla came up with some of the initial circuits and Marconi improved them. However, both designs used spark-gap transmitters, which were electrically noisy and unsuited to voice transmission (they could only do the dots and dashes of Morse code). Fessenden invented the continuous-wave alternator-transmitter, which today we call AM radio.

 

[shadron]

Radio, especially the transmission of voice over radio. Reginald Fessenden invented most of the equipment needed to send voice over the air.

Yes, Fessendon invented the CW alternator transmitter, and it did the job and proved a lot of what Fessendon claimed for continuous wave broadcasting. However, his equipment was a technological dead end. The invention of vacuum tubes moved transmitters into the "no-moving parts" category, and the alternators were shelved.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

It gives me the impression that "Graham Bell" is a name people are more likely to link to the Telephone than "Antonio Meucci".