Alexander Graham Bell and the Telephone Invention

First off, it is a fact that Alexander Graham Bell is the first to patent the invention of the telephone in the United States and the first to bring telephone services successfully to the marketplace. In fact, Mr. Bell beat out Mr. Gray by hours at the Patent Office on the same day submitting very similar telephone designs. Does that mean both stole Mr. Meucci's idea as well? Although Alexander Graham Bell drew upon his own idea about the telephone through his work on "harmonic telegraph" or "acoustic telegraph" in the effort to send multiple messages at once over a single wire as a way to help reduce the cost of telegraph service that use Morse Code. Inventors who worked on the acoustic telegraph included Charles Bourseul, Thomas Edison, Elisha Gray, and Alexander Graham Bell. Their efforts led to the invention of the telephone. Others have invented or claimed to have a telephone system such as Johann Philipp Reis, Innocenzo Manzetti, Charles Bourseul, Amos Dolbear, Sylvanus Cushman, Daniel Drawbaugh, Edward Farrar, and James McDonough.

Now, according to Tom Farley about the so called stealing of Mr. Meucci's telephone invention by Mr. Bell:

"...Like Gray, Meucci claims Bell stole his ideas. To be true Bell must have falsified every notebook and letter he wrote about coming to his conclusions. That is, it is not enough to steal, you must provide a false story about how you came along on the path to discovery. You must falsify each step toward invention. Nothing in Bell's writing, character, or his life after 1876 suggest he did so, indeed, in the more than 600 lawsuits which involved him, no one else was credited for inventing the telephone." Farley also writes that, "Nearly every scholar agrees that Bell and Watson were the first to transmit intelligible speech by electrical means. Others transmitted a sound or a click or a buzz but our boys [Bell and Watson] were the first to transmit speech one could understand."

And that's true. Alexander Graham Bell had a working prototype as a proof of concept.

Out of Alexander Graham Bell's patented invention of the telephone came the famous Bell Telephone Company a few years later it became AT&T. And the rest is history.

Now, just because the U.S. House of Representative passed a bill in 2002 on recognizing that Meucci was the person who invented the telephone does not mean much since the Senate didn't the pass that bill. What's more, the whole Meucci bill was suspect from the very beginning. 

Edwin Grosvenor found 10 errors in the 2002 congressional Meucci resolution. He was quite critical on the intent of the U.S. House of Representative and its historical accuracy regarding Meucci and the invention of the telephone.

Mr. Grosvenor also asked two very important questions in Section "C":

1) "Should Congress overrule the US courts and its own committee, which looked at evidence extensively, and without reviewing any evidence in the matter?"


2) "Should Congress pass resolutions on historical facts without checking with legitimate historians or their own library?"

So true.

Grosvenor concluded that: "The historical “facts” stated in HR 269 were obtained from highly biased sources, and based on shoddy, cursory research."  And people continue to ignore the fact that "Bell’s telephone patent was litigated in 600 court cases, with many different judges in different jurisdictions. Bell never lost a case, including the one involving Meucci."

That's 600 court cases successfully defended in Bell's telephone patent. It was literally litigated to death knowing just how valuable Bell's telephone patent was.

Out of Alexander Graham Bell's patented invention of the telephone came the famous Bell Telephone Company where years later it became AT&T telephone company. And ironically in 1964 AT&T produced its first videophone prototype at the 1964 New York World's Fair where two deaf users were able to freely communicate with each other between the fair and another city as a test market although in 1956 the Bell System (Western Electric/AT&T) produced a very crude picturephone but never test marketed.

So, each time you make a video phone relay call you are essentially paying homage to the inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell.  So, it'd be essentially impossible to "hang up" on Alexander Graham Bell simply because Alexander Graham Bell and many others after him made possible the existence of the video phone today. There's also a good chance that you use AT&T, too.  And remember all of the great excitement about the new video relay service app for iPhone 4 that would allow deaf and hard of hearing customers to make VRS calls? A true video phone for deaf signers when AT&T introduced it last year in December 2010?
And if you're thinking internet, well, Comcast is the largest cable operator and home internet service provider but in 2001, Comcast acquired the assets of the then largest cable television operator at the time, AT&T Broadband.

Savor the irony folks.

No matter what folks do, pretty much anything they touch using the telephone or laptop computer, much of the thanks still go back to Alexander Graham Bell and his first patented telephone invention.

*rubs hands* Mwahhahahaha! My plan is working flawlessly!

Calm down, folks.


And, yes, I'm content that Alexander Graham Bell is the father of the telephone.  I'm not going to lose any sleep over that. Time to put my hearing aid for the night and hit the sack. Oh, wait, did AGBell also help contribute/inspire on the invention of a hearing aid?

Alexander Bell’s Contributions to the Hearing Aid
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he was actually working on ways to amplify sound of the hearing impaired. His use of a receiver and phone was translated in the early 1900’s into a form of carbon microphone. This hearing aid included a receiver in or over the ear that had multiple wires running to the amplifier, which was worn around the neck.

Mon Dieu! Alexander Graham Bell's touch is everywhere!!

Sleep tight.

*rubs hands*