
Bell speaking into prototype model of
the telephone
The modern telephone is the culmination of work done by many
individuals, all worthy of recognition for their contributions to
the field.
Alexander Graham
Bell was the first to patent the telephone, an "apparatus for
transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically", after
experimenting with many primitive sound transmitters and receivers.
However, the history of the invention of the
telephone is a confusing collection of claims and
counterclaims, made no less confusing by the many lawsuits which
attempted to resolve the patent claims of several
individuals.
Non-electric "telephones"
According to a letter in the
Peking
Gazette, a Chinese inventor created a speech transmitting
device in 968, which probably transported sound through
speaking tubes, or pipes.
Speaking tubes remained common and can still
be found today in a variety of locations, including ships.
The string or "lover's" telephone has also been known for
centuries. Comprising two
diaphragms
connected by a taut string or wire, sound waves are carried as
vibrations along the string or wire from one diaphragm to the
other. The classic example is the
tin
can telephone, a children's toy made by connecting the two ends
of a string to the bottoms of two metal cans, paper cups or similar
items.
Make and break transmitters and electro-magnetic receivers
Innocenzo Manzetti
Innocenzo Manzetti mooted the
idea of a telephone as early as 1844, and may have made one in
1864, as an enhancement to an automaton built by him in 1849.
Charles Bourseul
In 1854 in the magazine
L'Illustration (Paris)
Charles Bourseul, a French telegraphist,
published a plan for conveying sounds and even speech by
electricity. Bourseul's ideas were also published in
Didaskalia (Frankfurt am Main) on September 28,
1854."Suppose", he explained, “that a man speaks near a movable
disc sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the
voice; that this disc alternately makes and breaks the currents
from a battery: you may have at a distance another disc which will
simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... It is certain that,
in a more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by
electricity. I have made experiments in this direction; they are
delicate and demand time and patience, but the approximations
obtained promise a favourable result.”
Johann Philipp Reis
In 1860
Johann Philipp Reis
produced a device which could transmit musical notes, and even a
lisping sentence or two. The first sentence spoken on it was "Das
Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat" (the horse doesn't eat cucumber
salad). See
Reis' telephone for a
detailed description. The Reis transmitter was a make-break
transmitter. That is, a needle attached to a diaphragm was
alternately pressed against, and released from a contact as the
sound moved the diaphragm. This make-or-break signaling was able to
transmit tones, and some vowels, but since it did not follow the
analog shape of the sound wave (the contact was pure digital, on or
off) it could not transmit consonants, or complex sounds. The Reis
transmitter was very difficult to operate, since the relative
position of the needle and the contact were critical to the
device's operation at all. This can be called a "telephone", since
it did transmit sounds over distance, but is hardly a telephone in
the modern sense, as it failed to transmit a good copy of any
supplied sound. Reis' invention is best known then as the "musical
telephone". Prior to 1947, the Reis device was tested by the
British company Standard Telephones and Cables (STC). The results
also confirmed it could faintly transmit and receive speech. At the
time STC was bidding for a contract with Alexander Graham Bell's
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and the results were
covered up by STC's chairman Sir Frank Gill to maintain Bell's
reputation.
Antonio Meucci
An early version of a voice communicating device was invented
around 1854 by
Antonio Meucci, who
called it a
teletrofono (
telectrophone). Pre-1875
evidence is lacking that it was an electromagnetic telephone.
The first
American demonstration of Meucci's invention took place in Staten Island
, New
York
in 1854. In 1860, a description of it was
reportedly published in an Italian-language New York newspaper,
although no known copy of that newspaper issue or article survived
to the present day. Meucci claimed to have invented a paired
electro-magnetic transmitter and receiver, where the motion of a
diaphragm modulated a signal in a coil by moving an electromagnet,
although this was not mentioned in his
1871 U.S. patent caveat. A further
discrepancy observed was that the device described in the 1871
caveat employed only a single conduction wire, with the telephone's
transmitter-receivers being insulated from a 'ground return'
path.
Meucci was also later credited with the early invention of
inductive loading of telephone wires to increase long-distance
signals. Unfortunately, serious burns from an accident, a lack of
English, and poor business abilities resulted in Meucci failing to
develop his inventions commercially in America.
Meucci demonstrated
some sort of instrument in 1849 in Havana, Cuba
, but the evidence is unclear if this was an
electric telephone or a variant of a string telephone that used wire.
Meucci has been further credited with invention of an anti-
sidetone circuit. However, examination showed that
his solution to sidetone was to maintain two separate telephone
circuits, and thus use twice as many transmission wires. The
anti-sidetone circuit later introduced by Bell Telephone instead
cancelled sidetone through a feedback process.
An
American District Telegraph
(ADT) laboratory reportedly lost some of Meucci's working models,
his wife reportedly disposed of others and Meucci, who sometimes
lived on public assistance, chose not to renew his 1871
teletrofono patent caveat
after 1874.
Meucci was recognized for his pioneering work on the telephone by
the
United States
House of Representatives in
House Resolution 269, dated June 11, 2002. The
resolution stated that
"if Meucci had been able to pay the $10
fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been
issued to Bell." However, the resolution was a symbolic,
non-binding statement without legal effect, and was promptly
followed by a legislative motion mooting it, passed unanimously by
Canada's 37th Parliament,
which declared that
Alexander
Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone. Additionally,
many others disagreed with the Congressional resolution, some of
whom provided
criticisms of both its accuracy and intent.
Chronology of Meucci's invention
An Italian researcher in telecommunications,
Basilio Catania, and the
Italian Society of
Electrotechnics, "Federazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica", have
devoted a Museum to Antonio Meucci, constructing a
chronology of his invention of the telephone and
tracing the history of the two legal trials involving Meucci and
Alexander Graham Bell. Both claim that Meucci was the real inventor
of the telephone, but base their argument on the reconstructed,
rather than contemporary, evidence. What follows, if not otherwise
stated, is a résumé of their historic reconstruction.
- In 1834 Meucci constructed a kind of acoustic telephone as a
way to communicate between the stage and control room at the
theatre "Teatro della Pergola" in Florence. This telephone is
constructed on the model of pipe-telephones on ships and is still
working.
- In 1848 Meucci developed a popular method of using electric
shocks to treat rheumatism. He used to
give his patients two conductors linked to 60 Bunsen batteries and
ending with a cork. He also kept two conductors linked to the same
Bunsen batteries. He used to sit in his laboratory, while the
Bunsen batteries were placed in a second room and his patients in a
third room. In 1849 while providing a treatment to a patient with a
114V electrical discharge, in his laboratory Meucci heard his
patient's scream through the piece of copper wire that was between
them, from the conductors he was keeping near his ear. His
intuition was that the "tongue" of copper wire was vibrating just
like a leave of an electroscope; which means that there was an
electrostatic effect. In order to continue the experiment without
hurting his patient, Meucci covered the copper wire with a piece of
paper. Through this device he heard inarticulated human voice. He
called this device "telegrafo parlante" (litt. "talking
telegraph").
- On the basis of this prototype, Meucci worked on more than 30
kinds of sound transmitting devices inspired by the telegraph model
as did other pioneers of the telephone, such as Charles Bourseul, Philipp Reis, Innocenzo Manzetti and others. Meucci
later claimed that he did not think about transmitting voice by
using the principle of the telegraph "make-and-break" method, but
he looked for a "continuous" solution that did not interrupt the
electric current.
- In 1856 Meucci later claimed that he constructed the first
electromagnetic telephone, made of an electromagnet with a nucleus
in the shape of a horseshoe bat, a diaphragm of animal skin,
stiffened with potassium dichromate and keeping a metal disk stuck
in the middle. The instrument was hosted in a cylindrical carton
box. He said he constructed this as a way to connect his
second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus
communicate with his wife who was an invalid.
- Meucci separated the two directions of transmission in order to
eliminate the so-called "local effect", adopting what we would call
today a 4-wire-circuit. He constructed a simple calling system with
a telegraphic manipulator which short-circuited the instrument of
the calling person, producing in the instrument of the called
person a succession of impulses (clicks), much more intense than
those of normal conversation. As he was aware that his device
required a bigger band than a telegraph, he found some means to
avoid the so-called "skin effect" through superficial treatment of
the conductor or by acting on the material (copper instead of
iron). He successfully used an insulated copper plait, thus
anticipating the litz wire used by Nikola
Tesla in RF coils.
- In 1864 Meucci later claimed that he realized his "best
device", using an iron diaphragm with optimized thickness and
tightly clamped along its rim. The instrument was housed in a
shaving-soap box, whose cover clamped the diaphragm.
- In August 1870, Meucci later claimed that he 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 "teletrofono". According to an Affidavit of lawyer Michael Lemmi drawings and notes
by Antonio Meucci dated September 27 1870 show coils of wire on
long distance telephone lines. The painting made by Nestore Corradi
[157509] in 1858 mentions the sentence "Electric
current from the inductor pipe"
The above information was published in the
Scientific American Supplement No. 520, December 19, 1885, based on
reconstructions produced in 1885, for which there was no
contemporary pre-1875 evidence. Meucci's 1871
caveat did not mention any of the telephone
features later credited to him by his lawyer, and which were
published in that Scientific American Supplement, a major reason
for the loss of the 'Bell v. Globe and Meucci' patent infringement
court case, which was decided against him. See
Antonio Meucci –The caveat, for the full
printed text of his 1871 teletrofono patent caveat.
Cromwell Varley
Around 1870 Mr.
C. F. Varley, F.R.S.,
a well-known English electrician, patented a number of variations
on the audio telegraph based on Reis' work. He never claimed or
produced a device capable of transmitting speech, only pure
tones.
Poul la Cour
Around
1874 Poul la Cour, a Danish
inventor,
experimented with audio telegraphs on a telegraph line between
Copenhagen
and Fredericia
in Jutland. His
experiment used a vibrating tuning-fork to interrupt the line
current, which, after traversing the line passed through an
electromagnet that acted upon the
tines of another tuning-fork, making it resonate at the same pitch
of the transmitting fork. Moreover, the hums were also recorded on
paper by turning the electromagnetic receiver into a
relay, which actuated a
Morse
code printer by means of a local
battery. Again, la Cour made no claims
of transmitting voice, only pure tones.
Daniel Drawbaugh
Daniel Drawbaugh, a bearded rustic
tinkerer from Pennsylvania, claimed to have invented a telephone
using a teacup as transmitter as early as 1867, and to have applied
for a patent about 1880, but his case was dismissed in the 1880-88
legal challenge to Bell (see
The
Telephone Cases), and also in 1896.
Electro-magnetic transmitters and receivers
Elisha Gray
- Main article: Elisha Gray, See
also: Elisha Gray
and Alexander Bell telephone controversy
Elisha Gray, of Chicago
also devised
a tone telegraph of this kind about the same time as La
Cour. In Gray's tone telegraph, several vibrating steel
reeds tuned to different frequencies interrupted the current, which
at the other end of the line passed through electromagnets and
vibrated matching tuned steel reeds near the electromagnet poles.
Gray's 'harmonic telegraph,' with vibrating reeds, was used by the
Western Union Telegraph Company. Since more than one set of
vibration frequencies — that is to say, more than one musical tone
— can be sent over the same wire simultaneously, the harmonic
telegraph can be utilised as a 'multiplex' or many-ply telegraph,
conveying several messages through the same wire at the same time;
and these can either be read by the operator by the sound, or a
permanent record can be made by the marks drawn on a ribbon of
travelling paper by a Morse recorder. On 27 July 1875, Gray was
granted U.S. patent 166,096 for "Electric Telegraph for
Transmitting Musical Tones" (the harmonic telegraph).
On 14 February 1876, Gray filed a
patent
caveat for a telephone on the very same day in 1876 as did
Bell's lawyer. The
water
transmitter described in Gray's caveat was strikingly similar
to the experimental telephone transmitter tested by Bell on March
10, 1876, a fact which raised questions about whether Bell (who
knew of Gray) was inspired by Gray's design or vice versa. Although
Bell did not use Gray's water transmitter in later telephones,
evidence suggests that Bell's lawyers may have obtained an unfair
advantage over Gray.
Alexander Graham Bell

Bell's March 10, 1876 laboratory
notebook entry describing his first successful experiment with the
telephone.
Alexander Graham Bell of Scotland
is commonly
credited as the inventor of the first practical telephone.
The classic story of his crying out "Watson, come here! I want to
see you!" is a well known part of American history. But Alexander
Graham Bell was also an astute and articulate business man with
influential and wealthy friends.
As
Professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University
, Bell was engaged in training teachers in the art
of instructing deaf mutes how to speak, and experimented with the
Leon Scott phonautograph in recording the vibrations of
speech. This apparatus consists essentially of a thin
membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light-weight stylus,
which traces an undulatory line on a plate of
smoked glass. The line is a graphic
representation of the vibrations of the membrane and the waves of
sound in the air.
This background prepared Bell for work with spoken sound waves and
electricity. He began his experiments in 1873-1874 with a harmonic
telegraph, following the examples of Bourseul, Reis, Meucci, and
Gray. Bell's designs employed various on-off-on-off make-break
current-interrupters driven by vibrating steel reeds which sent
interrupted current to a distant receiver electro-magnet that
caused a second steel reed or tuning fork to vibrate.
During a June 2, 1875 experiment by Bell and his assistant Watson,
a receiver reed failed to respond to the intermittent current
supplied by an electric battery. Bell told Watson, who was at the
other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had stuck to
the pole of the magnet. Mr. Watson complied, and to his
astonishment Bell heard a reed at his end of the line vibrate and
emit the same timbre of a plucked reed, although there was no
interrupted on-off-on-off current from a transmitter to make it
vibrate. A few more experiments soon showed that his receiver reed
had been set in vibration by the magneto-electric currents induced
in the line by the motion of the distant receiver reed in the
neighbourhood of its magnet. The battery current was not causing
the vibration but was needed only to supply the magnetic field in
which the reeds vibrated. Moreover, when Bell heard the rich
overtones of the plucked reed, it occurred to him that since the
circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech
might be converted into undulating (alternating) currents, which in
turn would reproduce the complex timbre, amplitude, and frequencies
of speech at a distance.
After Bell and Watson discovered on June 2, 1875 that movements of
the reed alone in a magnetic field could reproduce the frequencies
and timbre of spoken sound waves, Bell reasoned by analogy with the
mechanical phonautograph that a skin diaphragm would reproduce
sounds like the human ear when connected to a steel or iron reed or
hinged armature. On July 1, 1875, he instructed Watson to build a
receiver consisting of a stretched diaphragm or drum of
goldbeater's skin with an armature of
magnetized iron attached to its middle, and free to vibrate in
front of the pole of an electromagnet in circuit with the line. A
second membrane-device was built for use as a transmitter. This was
the "gallows" phone. A few days later they were tried together, one
at each end of the line, which ran from a room in the inventor's
house in Boston to the cellar underneath. Bell, in the work room,
held one instrument in his hands, while Watson in the cellar
listened at the other. Bell spoke into his instrument, “Do you
understand what I say?” and Mr. Watson answered “Yes”. However, the
voice sounds were not distinct and the armature tended to stick to
the electromagnet pole and tear the membrane.
Because of illness and other commitments, Bell made little or no
telephone improvements or experiments for eight months until after
his U.S. patent 174,465 was published. On March 10, 1876, Bell
tested Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent was
granted and only as a
proof of
concept scientific experiment to prove to his own satisfaction
that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be
electrically transmitted. After March 1876, Bell focused on
improving the electromagnetic telephone and never used Gray's
liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial
use.
Bell's success

Alexander Graham Bell's telephone
patent drawing, 7 March 1876.
The first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by
Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876 when Bell spoke into his
device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” and Watson
answered. Bell used Gray's liquid transmitter design in his famous
March 10, 1876 experiment, but Bell did not use a liquid
transmitter again, because it was not practical for commercial
products.
The first
long distance telephone call was made on 10 August 1876 by Bell
from the family homestead in Brantford
, Ontario
, to his
assistant located in Paris, Ontario
, some 10
miles (16 km) distant.
A finished instrument was then made, having a transmitter formed of
a double electromagnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on
a ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its
middle. A mouthpiece before the diaphragm directed the sounds upon
it, and as it vibrated with them, the soft iron “armature” induced
corresponding currents in the coils of the electromagnet. These
currents after traversing the line were passed through the
receiver, which consisted of a tubular electromagnet, having one
end partially closed by a thin circular disc of soft iron fixed at
one point to the end of the tube. This receiver bore a resemblance
to a cylindrical metal box with thick sides, having a thin iron lid
fastened to its mouth by a single screw. When the undulatory
current passed through the coil of this magnet, the disc, or
armature-lid, was put into vibration and sounds were emitted from
it.
This primitive telephone was rapidly improved, the double
electromagnet being replaced by a single bar magnet having a small
coil or bobbin of fine wire surrounding one pole, in front of which
a thin disc of ferrotype was fixed in a circular mouthpiece, and
served as a combined membrane and armature. On speaking into the
mouthpiece, the iron diaphragm vibrated with the voice in the
magnetic field of the pole, and
thereby caused undulatory currents in the coil, which, after
traveling through the wire to the distant receiver, were received
in an identical apparatus. This form was patented January 30, 1877.
The sounds were weak and could only be heard when the ear was close
to the earphone/mouthpiece, but they were distinct.
Public demonstrations
Earliest public demonstration of Bell's telephone
In June 1876, Bell exhibited a telephone prototype at the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, where it attracted the
attention of Brazilian emperor
Pedro
II and scientist Sir William Thomson. In August 1876 at a
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
Thomson revealed the telephone to the European public. In
describing his visit to the Philadelphia Exhibition, Thomson said,
'I heard [through the telephone] passages taken at random from the
New York newspapers: "s.s. Cox has arrived" (I failed to make out
the s.s. Cox); "The City of New York", "Senator Morton", "The
Senate has resolved to print a thousand extra copies", "The
Americans in London have resolved to celebrate the coming Fourth of
July!" All this my own ears heard spoken to me with unmistakable
distinctness by the then circular disc armature of just such
another little electro-magnet as this I hold in my hand.'
Later public demonstrations
The later telephone design was publicly exhibited on May 4 1877 at
a lecture given by Professor Bell in the Boston Music Hall.
According to a report: Going to the small telephone box with its
slender wire attachments, Mr. Bell coolly asked, as though
addressing some one in an adjoining room, “Mr. Watson, are you
ready!” Mr. Watson, five miles away in Somerville, promptly
answered in the affirmative, and soon was heard a voice singing
“America”. [...] Going to another instrument, connected by wire
with Providence, forty-three miles distant, Mr. Bell listened a
moment, and said, “Signor Brignolli, who is assisting at a concert
in Providence Music Hall, will now sing for us.” In a moment the
cadence of the tenor's voice rose and fell, the sound being faint,
sometimes lost, and then again audible. Later, a cornet solo played
in Somerville was very distinctly heard.
Still later, a
three-part song came over the wire from Somerville, and Mr. Bell
told his audience “I will switch off the song from one part of the
room to another, so that all can hear.” At a subsequent lecture in
Salem,
Massachusetts
, communication was established with Boston,
eighteen miles distant, and Mr. Watson at the latter place sang
“Auld Lang Syne”, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and “Hail Columbia”,
while the audience at Salem joined in the chorus.
Summary of Bell's achievements
Bell did for the telephone what Henry Ford did for the automobile.
Although not the first to experiment with telephonic devices, Bell
and the companies founded in his name were the first to develop
commercially practical telephones around which a successful
business could be built and grow. Bell adopted carbon transmitters
similar to Edison's transmitters and adapted telephone exchanges
and switching plug boards developed for telegraphy. Watson and
other Bell engineers invented numerous other improvements to
telephony. Bell succeeded where others failed to assemble a
commercially viable telephone
system. It can be
argued that Bell invented the telephone industry.
Variable resistance transmitters
Water microphone - Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray recognized the lack of fidelity of the make-break
transmitter of Reis and Bourseul and reasoned by analogy with the
lovers telegraph, that if the current could be made to more closely
model the movements of the diaphragm, rather than simply opening
and closing the circuit, greater fidelity might be achieved. Gray
filed a
patent caveat with the US
patent office on February 14, 1876 for a
liquid microphone. The device used a metal
needle or rod that was placed — just barely — into a liquid
conductor, such as a water/acid mixture. In response to the
diaphragm's vibrations, the needle dipped more or less into the
liquid, varying the electrical resistance and thus the current
passing through the device and on to the receiver. Gray did not
convert his caveat into a patent until after the caveat had expired
and hence left the field open to Bell.
When gray applied for a patent for the variable resistance
telephone transmitter, the
Patent Office determined "while
Gray was undoubtedly the first to conceive of and disclose the
[variable resistance] invention, as in his caveat of 14 February
1876, his failure to take any action amounting to completion until
others had demonstrated the utility of the invention deprives him
of the right to have it considered."
Carbon microphone - Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison took the next
step in improving the telephone with his invention in 1878 of the
carbon grain transmitter that
provided a strong voice signal on the transmitting circuit that
made long-distance calls practical. Edison discovered that carbon
grains, squeezed between two metal plates, had a variable
resistance that was related to the pressure. Thus, the grains could
vary their resistance as the plates moved in response to sound
waves, and reproduce sound with good fidelity, without the weak
signals associated with electro-magnetic transmitters.
The carbon microphone was further improved by
Emile Berliner,
Francis Blake,
David E. Hughes,
Henry
Hunnings, and
Anthony White.
The carbon transmitter remained standard in telephony until the
1980s, and is still being produced.
Improvements to the early telephone
Additional inventions such as the call bell, central telephone
exchange, common battery, ring tone, amplification, trunk lines,
wireless phones, etc. were made by various engineers who made the
telephone the useful and widespread apparatus it is now.
Telephone exchange - Tivadar Puskás
Tivadar Puskás was working on
his idea for a
telegraph exchange when
Alexander Graham Bell received
the first patent for the
telephone. This
caused Puskás to take a fresh look at his own work and he refocused
on perfecting a design for a
telephone exchange. Puskás got in touch
with the American inventor
Thomas
Edison who liked the design. According to Edison, "Tivadar
Puskas was the first person to suggest the idea of a telephone
exchange". Puskás's idea finally became a reality in 1877 in
Boston. It was then that the Hungarian word "hallom" "I hear you"
was used for the first time in a telephone conversation when, on
hearing the voice of the person at the other end of the line,
Puskás shouted "hallom". This cannot be confirmed by any original
documents, however it has passed into Hungarian modern folklore.
Hallom was shortened to
Hello, an older
greeting that can be traced back to the Old English verb
hǽlan.
Controversy
Bell has been widely recognized as the "inventor" of the telephone
outside of Italy, where Meucci was championed as its inventor. In
the United States, there are numerous reflections of Bell as a
North American icon for inventing the telephone, and the matter was
for a long time non-controversial. In June 2002, however, the
United States
House of Representatives passed a symbolic bill recognizing the
contributions of Antonio Meucci
"in the invention of the
telephone" (not
"for the invention of the
telephone"), throwing the matter into some controversy.
Ten days
later the Canadian
parliament
countered with a symbolic motion conferring
official recognition for the invention of the telephone to
Bell.
Champions of Meucci, of Manzetti, and of Gray have each offered
fairly precise tales of a contrivance whereby Bell actively stole
the invention of the telephone from their specific inventor. In the
2002 congressional resolution, it was inaccurately noted that Bell
worked in a laboratory in which Meucci's materials had been stored,
and claimed that Bell must thus have had access to those materials.
Manzetti claimed that Bell visited him and examined his device in
1865. And it is alleged that Bell bribed a patent examiner, Zenas
Wilber, not only into processing his application before Gray's, but
allowing a look at his rival's designs before final
submission.
One of the valuable claims in Bell's 1876 patent US 174,465 was
claim 4, a method of producing variable electrical current in a
circuit by varying the resistance in the circuit. That feature was
not shown in any of Bell's
patent
drawings, but was shown in Elisha Gray's drawings in his
caveat filed the same day 14 February
1876. A description of the variable resistance feature, consisting
of 7 sentences, was inserted into Bell's application. That it was
inserted is not disputed. But when it was inserted is a
controversial issue. Bell testified that he wrote the sentences
containing the variable resistance feature before 18 January 1876
"almost at the last moment" before sending his draft application to
his lawyers. A book by Evenson argues that the 7 sentences and
claim 4 were inserted, without Bell's knowledge, just before Bell's
application was hand carried to the Patent Office by one of Bell's
lawyers on 14 February 1876.
Contrary to the popular story, Gray's caveat was taken to the US
Patent Office a few hours before Bell's application. Gray's caveat
was taken to the Patent Office in the morning of 14 February 1876
shortly after the Patent Office opened and remained near the bottom
of the in-basket until that afternoon. Bell's application was filed
shortly before noon on 14 February by Bell's lawyer who requested
that the filing fee be entered immediately onto the cash receipts
blotter and Bell's application was taken to the Examiner
immediately. Late in the afternoon, Gray's caveat was entered on
the cash blotter and was not taken to the Examiner until the
following day. The fact that Bell's filing fee was recorded earlier
than Gray's led to the myth that Bell had arrived at the Patent
Office earlier. Bell was in Boston on 14 February and did not know
this happened until later. Gray later abandoned his caveat and that
opened the door to Bell being granted US patent 174,465 for the
telephone on 7 March 1876.
Patents
See also
References
Bibliography
- Baker, Burton H. (2000), The Gray Matter: The Forgotten
Story of the Telephone, Telepress, St. Joseph, MI, 2000. ISBN
0-615-11329-X
- (fr) Bourseul, Charles, Transmission électrique de la
parole, L'Illustration (Paris),
26.08.1854
- Bruce, Robert V. (1990), Bell: Alexander Bell and the
Conquest of Solitude, Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN
0-80149691-8
- Coe, Lewis (1995), The Telephone and Its Several Inventors:
A History, McFarland, North Carolina, 1995. ISBN
0-7864-0138-9
- Evenson, A. Edward (2000), The Telephone Patent Conspiracy
of 1876: The Elisha Gray - Alexander Bell Controversy,
McFarland, North Carolina, 2000. ISBN 0-7864-0883-9
- Gray, Charlotte, (2006) "Reluctant Genius: The Passionate
Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell",
HarperCollins, Toronto, 2006, ISBN 0002006766, ISBN 9780002006767
IBO: 621.385092;
- Josephson, Matthew (1992), Edison: A Biography, Wiley,
ISBN 0-471-54806-5
- Shulman, Seth (2008), The
Telephone Gambit, Norton & Company, New York, 2008.
ISBN 978-0-393-06206-9
- Thompson, Sylvanus P. (1883), Philipp Reis, Inventor of the
Telephone, London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1883.
- American Treasures of the Library of
Congress, Alexander Graham Bell - Lab notebook I, pages 40-41
(image 22)
- Scientific American Supplement No. 520, December 19, 1885
- Telephone Patents
- HRes 269, text of 17 October 2001
- HRes 269, text of 11 June 2002
Further reading
- Bethure, Brian, (2008) Did Bell Steal the Idea for the Phone? (Book
Review), Maclean's Magazine, February 4, 2008;
- Shulman, Seth, (2007) Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's
Secret, W.W. Norton & Comp.; 1 edition, December 25, 2007),
ISBN 0393062066, ISBN 978-0393062069
External links