Patent Assistance Worldwide Takes A Look At The Development of the Telephone: Antonio Meucci vs Alexander Graham Bell

In excess of 130 years folks have been writing about, debating and all out fighting with reference to just who created the telephone. Certainly you can find numerous contenders, but nevertheless, it always has a tendency to come down to a final two. The first, Alexander Graham Bell, over the years is ordinarily attributed with creating the telephone. The second is Antonio Meucci, established in Italian and Italian American groups as the true developer of the telephone, or ‘teletrofono’ as he called it.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland; his family business enterprise was speech and elocution with both his father and grandfather being widely renowned in the field. Bell followed in their footsteps and went about researching the approaches of speech. He inevitably transferred into the particular field of visual speech, which was developed by his father. Bell went to England, Canada and in due course ended up in the Boston area, educating educators on how to teach the deaf to communicate. By the time his telephone invention was taking shape he was a well known mentor at Boston University in the vocal physiology division.

Antonio Meucci was born near Florence, Italy and early on trained in chemical and mechanical engineering, although he terminated his specialized training around the age of 15/16 given that he could no longer afford it. Meucci’s preliminary professional work experience is comprised of employment for the Florentine administration and then converting into a stage technician in Florence. He then moved to Havana, Cuba with his wife who was a costume designer and he was employed to work in the same theater as she. It is expressed that while employed at this theater, Meucci put together a first example of his creation to converse between the stage and control room. Meucci immigrated to Staten Island, New York in 1850. A pattern of unfortunate incidents affected Meucci; his wife was bedridden with a type of rheumatoid arthritis, and he went bankrupt in the early 1860’s. While he obtained a patent caveat for his teletrofono in 1871, which was parallel to what Bell subsequently patented, Meucci never finalized his patent, and consequently either decided to stop paying for the yearly renewal or was financially unable.

The United States Patent Office archives reveal that Bell requested and was allocated his patent in 1874. The controversy is persistent that had Meucci been better financed he would be accepted as the founder of the telephone. While Bell encountered over 600 lawsuits from various other designers claiming to have been the actual inventiveness pertaining to the invention of the telephone, he never lost a legal proceeding.

Congress formulated a determination in 2002 stating that "Antonio Meucci was a man of vision whose enormous talents led to the invention of the telephone. Meucci began work on his invention in the mid-1880s, refining and perfecting the telephone during his many years living on Staten Island." Although this proclamation does in fact lend credit to Meucci’s effort and skills, it is worded so that he is primarily allocated credit for leading to the invention and not for the invention. This has often times been misinterpreted. As a consequence, to this day, Alexander Graham Bell stands as the ‘inventor’ of the telephone, with United States Patent No. 174,465 to back up his claims.