The First Phone Call Was 133 Years Ago

magacious writes "March 10 is the 133rd anniversary of the first telephone call. It occurred between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson back on this day in 1876. But there is some debate about whether Bell is actually the rightful owner of the crown for such invention. Having worked on the idea of transmitting speech using electricity for some time, Bell filed his patent on 14 February 1876, either just before or just after his main rival for the title of inventor of the telephone, Elisha Gray, filed his own. Bell won the patent and Gray died in obscurity."

Gray was a professional inventor

[Skurge357]

If I remember correctly, Elisha Gray's patent application for this was one of several that he submitted that day, only a few hours after Bell's went in.

Re:Patent sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the potential for profit is there to be chased it doesn't really matter who gets it (within reason of course).

It matters a lot. Different inventors have different abilities to turn the idea monopolised by a patent into reality.

Re:Patent sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

You completely missed the points _of this case_:
1) Bell was not the only one, so even among the _inventors_ the majority lost _due to patents_
2) Since there were others doing the same thing there would have been others doing the invention anyway.

So if your friend is doing something unique, the original idea of patents still applies and my post says nothing against them.
If however your friend does the same kind of stuff another thousand to hundred-thousand people are doing at the same time, then honestly it would probably be better for all including him if he stopped, or at least he would know for sure he could actually make use of his invention in the end and wouldn't have to pay royalties just because someone else was a minute faster.
That was the point of my post, and I think you missed it completely.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[VShael]

Not that it matters much, but Congress passed a resolution on June 11th, 2002, recognising him as the inventor of the telephone.

Also, people should know that Meucci sent his patent designs to the lab where Bell worked. And they went "missing".

There's a whole shady side to that story which is not really acknowledged in the official history.

Elish Gray hardly obscure

[tjstork]

I love how everyone loves to paint poor Elisha Gray as this hard working guy, but, he was actually by no means a poor man himself. He had a nice little business that he sold to Western Union for a healthy chunk of change. Viewed in that context, what we're really talking about here is the then giant Western Union, via Elisha Gray, versus the then tiny Bell, fighting over the telephone. If anyone was the "tiny" guy fighting the system at that time, it was in fact, Alexander Graham Bell!

Re:Antonio Meucci

[jabuzz]

Never heard of the Russian angle but Swan in the U.K. invented one at the same time as Edison. Big patent battle, ended up joining forces and cornering the market.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[iocat]

Bingo! I wish I had mod points. When you look at a lot of major inventions -- the telephone, the car, the lightbulb, TV, digital general purpose computers, etc. -- you'll find that regardless of whoever eventually was credited with the invention, there were any number of people working on the same problem, at about the same rate, and making very close breakthroughs, at the same time. Sometimes ideas are just "in the air." Typically one guy gets credit, which is sort of sad, but that's kind of the way it is -- at least with lay people. Anyone who is a historian or reads a little more deeply will evetually learn all the other peopel and their possibly claims / contributions. Because there are so many people who were clearly on the right track, you will also get a lot of arguments.

for instance, if you look here [nau.edu], you'll see three groups, each of which has a strong case for being said to be the inevntor of the modern computer (Konrad Zuse, who built a programmable electro-mechanical computer in 1936, Anastoff and Berry who build a digital computer -- that was not general purpose or programmable in 1942, and Eckert and Mauchley, who built a vacuum tube base, programmable, general purpose computer in 1946). I won't get into the details, but it becomes a religious thing at some point -- I once fell out with a friend because I refused to accept Anastoff as the sole inventor of the computer. (My friend was from Iowa).