WHO WON THE PATENT
FOR THE TELEPHONE?
G'day folks,
The invention of the modern telephone - and who exactly got the credit - came down to the wire in early 1876.
The lawyers for Alexander Graham Bell
and another inventor by the name of Elisha Gray both filed patents on
the morning of February 14, 1876. According to research years later,
Bell was the fifth entry of the day, and Gray the 39th, thus Bell was
awarded the patent.
After decades of controversy and much disagreement over who reached the
patent office first, some have suggested that malfeasance at the US
Patent Office had resulted in Bell wrongly getting the patent first.
Other conspiracies suggest that Bell stole the information from Gray's
invention. No defining evidence of this has ever been uncovered.
In any case, on March 7, 1876, the US Patent Office issued Bell with the
telephone patent and the rest is history. Bell became the father of the
telephone, and after his patent was filed the telephone gradually
became a necessity in modern life. Bell built and tested the first
working phone on March 10, 1876 (using a liquid transmitter, a similar
idea as proposed by Elisha Gray) speaking to his assistant, Thomas
Watson, saying the words "Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you."
Bell refused to have a telephone in his office, considering the invention a distraction from his work as a scientist.
Clancy's comment: Interesting that Bell didn't want a phone in his office.
I'm ...
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