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Who Really Invented The Telegraph?
Fat Boy unslim writes "It's been 250 years since the publication of a paper describing the theory behind sending messages down a wire using electricity. Unfortunately, no one knows who wrote it." If you thought the answer was as simple as "Morse," this article may come as a surprise.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Hedy Lamarr.
How long before this site is slash-dot-dot-dot-dash-dot-dash-dotted?
I thought everyone knew it was Charles Moore.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
and thanks for finding that. you all own me 1 penny per sine wave ever sent down a wire, however I will generously give you the amplitude under a GPL liscense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Someone work in a Microsoft slam, too. I need my fix.
ground-breaking paper was simply signed with the initials "CM, Renfrew"
CM obviously stands for CowboyMeal, which is CowboyNeal's pen name.
NO CARRIER
I read this book shortly after it came out in paperback, and I have to say that it's fascinating. It discusses various early telegraph systems in detail, including those not using electricity at al. More importantly, it draws startling parallels between the telegraph's influence on 19th century society and the Internet's influence today, especially during the dotcom boom. This is a must-read for the true geek.
Check out my eclectic infosec blog at InfoSecPotpou
Disputes between would-be-inventors of obvious things? Who would've expected that?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
EXACTLY 250 years ago today, a Scottish inventor penned a theory that led to the electric telegraph and the mobile phone.
I have a neighbor that looks about that age, maybe it was him.
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
Wow...Configuration Management actually accomplished something! :)
Morse certainly didn't invent the first electrical telegraph; he just invented the most practical one. Most of the previous electrical telegraphs had been either analog and highly unreliable or required multiple wires; some were even both.
The Morse telegraph required only one wire (the return went through the Earth), which was a huge cost savings in the time before cheap insulation, and yet was a binary on/off transmission with the associated reliability advantages. The original Morse code (sometimes called "railway Morse") used four symbol lengths; once the Morse telegraph spread and eventually went wireless the "international Morse code" simplified this to only two symbol lengths; this is the code which is invariably used even today.
I'm not sure who invented it but I think I know what one of the first messages was:
Dear Sir
I am calling to help you lower your long distance calling rates
Please respond
me karma am bad
I suspect the question of "who invented this first" is often the wrong one to ask. It's natural to seek a simple, contained explanation for these things, but in reality almost anything that's more than trivial has a longer history to follow than just the inspiration of one person (or intelligence).
For instance just as another example, the question of who invented the toaster seems like it might have a short answer, but the truth is that this pinnacle of culinary automation is the result of thousands of years of refinement.
I certainly don't want to play down the importance of any one individual in inventing toasters or telegraphs, but that also means we can't play down all the others before them. So instead we might ask "what process was involved in creating X". The answer will probably be more interesting too.
Could I interest anyone in some toast?
CM = Charles Manson!
How ya like dat?
Pasted From: http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Telegraph/00000011.h tm
The identity of 'C. M.,' who dated his letter from Renfrew, has not been established beyond a doubt. There is a tradition of a clever man living in Renfrew at that time, and afterwards in Paisley, who could 'licht a room wi' coal reek (smoke), and mak' lichtnin' speak and write upon the wa'.' By some he was thought to be a certain Charles Marshall, from Aberdeen; but it seems likelier that he was a Charles Morrison, of Greenock, who was trained as a surgeon, and became connected with the tobacco trade of Glasgow. In Renfrew he was regarded as a kind of wizard, and he is said to have emigrated to Virginia, where he died.
But what of the signature "CM Renfrew"? Captain Montgomery from Renfrew. Why no S for Scott? Unnecessary. Everyone from Renfrew (in those days) was a Scott. It was the ancestral home. It's so obvious, it's silly.
Edison wasn't a thief, but he certaintly wasn't a "creator." He was an "adaptor." He took other people's ideas that were half-baked and unfinished and actually made them work. The ancient Greeks created lots of stuff, but the Romans perfected many of them.
actually Philo Farnsworth invented the television
Really? I thought it was either an offer to refinance someone's mortgage or to tell them they'd won a trip to London.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
I'm sure Marcino picked some obscure Scottish town he'd never heard of, and picked a Scottish journal. Since he hated recognition and all. Oh, and he was born in 1874 - which was just a BIT late.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
There is no political correctness to say that America spent a long time establishing itself, with the opening frontier, and because of this, Europe was where the majority of inventions were developed. Obviously this changed over time, but looking at inventions in the late 1800's, Europe definatly contributed the majority.
Was probably bought out by MicroMorse.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Renfew is the name of the town, not the person. All they have is a paper signed with the initials "C.M." and a location of Renfew, which is a far cry from knowing who the paper was written by.
Obviously, if the original inventor had secured his IP rights through patents early on, he would have been credited for his idea instead of being doomed to languish in obscurity.
"Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...." - Abraham Simpson
Bollocks. Hertz gets the main credit, and Marconi's use of the lodge-Muirhead coherer was what beat Tesla hollow.
Tesla had some good ideas, but a lot of very very bad ones too. Live with it.
Steve
"Guglielmo Marconi"
You mean that guy who knocked off Tesla's invention?
Certainly, we can't forget our history, but in this case, who invented it is irrelevant; the fact that it was invented is. The recognition of a name is, frankly, petty.
I say it was a Tesla. According to this here slashdot thingy Tesla is responsible for everything that ever was and will be invented. All Hail Nikola Tesla!
Al Gores [sic] great great great grandfather
Ah. Must have been before the invention of the apostrophe.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
The way current IP laws are heading the guy would STILL have the patent on it!
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
The same is true for most of the "great" inventions or ideas we celebrate. It is very rare indeed that a ground breaking new idea appears out of the mainstream, and when it does, it usually doesn't catch on until the mainstream catches up with it and someone else gets the credit.
It wasn't an American.
Couldn't have been, either. The U.S. didn't exist in 1753. I think it's more remarkable that this article predated the battery... this guy was really thinking ahead of his time.
...and there's evidence that the Norse found it even before the Greek...
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
The real first message ever sent using Morse, by Charles Morse, is actually interesting by itself: "What hath God wrought?"
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The true relevance can be seen from this quote
because other scientists experimenting with electricity at the time could not see any use for it in communications.
In other words, this CM was the first to imagine and publish this application for electricity. It was a great leap of intuitiveness. I do not believe it was, however, the telegraph, which needed other leaps of intuitiveness.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Didn't the Native Americans (or anyone else who used patterned smoke signals before them) invent telegrapy? Yeah, yeah, it's not the *electric* telegraph but it's almost the exact same principle...
--
est modus in rebus
There are two (English|Scottish) Lords bragging about who's family was more important.
The first Lord says that while doing renovations on their family castle they found a buried copper cable 2 miles long put down in the 1500's. This, he says, proves his family invented the telegraph hundreds of years before any one else.
The second Lord says that while doing renovations on HIS castle they found NO cable. THIS proves, he says, that his family was using WIRELESS, hundreds of years before the first Lord's family was using telegraph.
After seeing so many of these "who's on first" discussions break down into unresolvable claims and counter claims, usually along nationalistic lines, we start to see that many 'inventions' actually look like state of the art 'waves' involving MANY, MANY people working in varying degress of interinvolvment, and that any one particular person just bob's up and down on the wave crest - if that one person wasn't there at the right place at the right time any one of the others could have easily taken his or her place. You might as well be saying someting like "Neil Armstrong invented moon walking!" which overlooks the talents and dedicated efforts of a huge number of people over a very long time, from the ancient Chinese to Robert Goddard to Werner Von Braun and a large cast of others who helped put him there.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
What the hell does the second sentence have to do with the first? Columbus was a Spaniard, not an American (as there were no "Americans" at the time).
Besides, the first person to "discover" America was wandered over a land bridge from eastern Siberia some 10,000 - 15,000 years ago.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
If I remember right -- and no, I wasn't around back then! -- Henry invented the idea of an electromagnetic "sounder" and an interrupted circuit as a method of signalling. Morse (who was an artist by trade) invented the code that bears his name (though what we call "Morse code" today is not much like his original encoding, just as EBCDIC isn't ASCII insn't UNICODE). Originally, Morse code was a VISUAL medium -- the telegraph was supposed to output as short and long marks on a moving paper tape (which method -- Kleinschmidt?? -- was used by the military in WWII, though I forget what the details were). But the telegraph operators soon learned to decode the clicks and gaps without bothering to refill the messy, balky inking devices.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
That's odd... I thought America was discovered by the people who lived there.
Following the logic of the new IP laws the guy would still be alive.
Goes to show how much brainpower that goes into creating them...
In case you didn't know, Radio Shack no longer sells morse code training tapes. You'll have to buy them from the ARRL.
Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.
Finally, he really did try to work on a machine to see if there was life after death, but no model or plans were found in any of his labs.
I guess you really can take it with you...
There is such a thing as multiple discovery. The reason that Columbus is given credit for discovering the New World is because his discovery was the historically significant one. The response to previous discoveries of America was minor and historically unimportant; none of those other travelers started significant, long lasting communication between the New and Old World. That's why Columbus was able to re-discover it independently. The previous discoverers' knowledge quickly died out. Columbus's voyage, OTOH, quickly lead to large scale trips between Europe and America, so that the two of them became socially, politically, and economically tied together. After Columbus, you couldn't discover America again because knowledge of it was too widespread for it to count as a discovery.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Perhaps because it's true. Sorry to disturb your cosy worldview, but the sad fact is not -everything- was invented or discovered in America.
And I'm fast starting to believe that the only thing Americans are any good at these days is stealing other people's ideas and claiming them as their own. Bill Gates is of course the first name that comes to mind; esr's rant ends up with a list of every major 'innovation' from MS, and who it was bought or stolen from. Then there's all the business-method patent companies; Amazon, PanIP, etc.
And then there's the entire issue of the wright brothers, philo farnsworth, etc. Sure the wright brothers were scientific about things, but baboo dick managed some fairly well controlled flights as well as his first less than impressive decent and crash into a ditch.
Sure the CRT was a great step forward, but bard invented the basic syncronised scanning of an image.
The camera part of this has already gone to CCD. The basic scanning concept that bard invented is still used; the beam of electrons that farnsworth invented isn't. So who invented the video camera again?
When most TV's go LCD, are we going to forget farnsworth and credit the inventor of the LCD with inventing "television" ?
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
...invented the sandwich.
Samuel Morser invented Morse Code.
Plato invented the plate.
that is all
Yeah! Next thing you know, the Brits'll say that THEY were the first ones to capture an Enigma from the Nazis, and not a team of Americans like was portrayed in U-571... oh, wait. :-)
~Philly
Interestingly, the apostrophe is a recent invention. It is not a real punctuation mark, but a printers note which has found its way into mainstream English use. It is the only punctuation mark to have absolutely no effect on pronunciation.
Hello,This is a excite game
This game is my first work.
You're the first player.
I hope you would like it.
In the same light "who invented wireless ?"
j cbose. htmh tml
The most common answer would be Marconi.
This is completely incorrect.
The first wireless communication was invented by an Indian scientist named Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1899 (recognised now by IEEE). Of course he wasn't savvy enough to get patents and all and as in those times it was easy to suppress a scientific achievement from a thirld world colonial rules state. He is very respected in part of the country who studied science as a gift to mankind.
see some information here
http://www.minhas.net/culture/indianpeople/
http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/~demerson/bose/bose.
or otherwise google on "jagadish chandra bose".
As a further information he was the first scientist to discover and prove that plants have life.
A random thought that occurred to me while reading the article: If the telegraph were invented for the first time today, would it have a chance of being successful?
Naturally there would be the big patent fight, with various people and corporations suing back and forth, claiming credit for the invention. But even if that were settled, think of the resistance that there would be to the (new) idea of setting poles with wires strung between them:
Environmental groups: "Birds will be tangled in the wires.. and what about the effects of EMF on children?"
Religous groups: "God didn't mean for man to be able to communicate with other men in an instant fashion. The telegraph is an instrument of the devil!"
Rich people: "I don't want those ugly poles and wires in my neighborhood. They'll lower my property values!"
Poor people: "It's only rich people who can afford to send telegraphs, but they run all the wires through our neighborhoods. It's discrimination!"
...I resent all this talk about my ancestor not being the innovative pioneer that he was. And I resent all those royalties that...oh, wait, I've never actually received a royalty. Nevermind.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
It might not have been Morse who invented it, but I bet if we wait long enough SBC will come out saying they have a patent on it.
Well, I am voting for Les Paul.
The "CM" is not initials. They are really his favorite musical note and another note he was still working on.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Afterwards, his older brother, Samuel, beat the living daylights out of him for playing with his stuff.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
The Scotsman story does contain an interesting error, claiming that the steam engine had not been invented in 1753. Truth was two Englishmen Thomas Savery and then Thomas Newcomen had built successful steam engines before 1753, which were being used to pump water out of mines.
In 1765 James Watt, a Scot, figgured out why Thomas Newcomen's steam engine didn't work well, and came up with a much better design.
Still, between telegraph and steam engine do we have a plot to claim Scotland is the source of all good things (ok, so it is often true, but...).
Columbus was a Spaniard
Columbus was Genovese! He was only working for the Spanish.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Anti-American rants are of course terribly fashionable, but that's a weird example to give. Most of Gates' nonnovations were stolen from other American companies.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Or could it have been Connor Mcleod of the clan Mcleod?
Here We Are STOP Born To Be Kings STOP Are Princes Of Universe FULL STOP
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Semaphore.
You can't take the sky from me...
Last time I checked the dictionary, "perfecting and then patenting" an idea wasn't considered theft. Not even in Europe.
The RIAA would shut down the telegraph because there would be a possibility that songs could be encoded into Morse and sent over the wires.
"If you hear silence, thank Hillary Rosen".
In "CM, Renfrew", Renfrew isn't a place name, it's the name of CM's asistant who was taking dictation of the paper. CM is obviously the infamous Scottish vampire, Count MacCula.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
James Burke. He seems to working a project called KnowledgeWeb
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You're correct. Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, (D)Arpa did. (And it wasn't a military project, like a lot of people say.)
Or Russians will claim that it were them who won the WWII...
Morse didn't actually invent the morse code. His was flawed and wouldn't make sence, so his partner changed it. Naturally Morse took credit for it, and his partner was forgotten.
leprkan...
Why this, and not MAKE*MONEY*FAST, or "Increase the Size of your Penis!!!", or "Radio Controlled Matchbox Cars!!!" or a personal email from Mariam Abacha begging you to let her give you $85 million United States Dollars, or...?
Catherine
Oh please, with that bad english he can't be from europe... errh, wait, maybe france..
-H
And I have a frightening feeling that "Charles Morse" was some combination of Samuel and Moore, the latter being the inventor of FORTH.
dit dit dit, dit dit dit, dah dah dah.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You mean it wasn't Al Gore!?
-Jason
dididida di didadi dadidada didi dadi da di didadi di dididi da didi dadi dadadi
/.'s lameness filter)
(Change "di" to "." and "da" to "-" before decoding it here. Sorry - it was the only way to get this post past
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
...my first thought was that CM was a woman. Ada Lovelace not withstanding, female intellectuals had a hard time being taken seriously until just recently (perhaps up to the 1940s.) I don't know if that was more or less the case in ascestral Scotland, but it was not uncommon for women and girls to publish their writings anonymously or pseudonymously, thus to remain utterly unknown even if their ideas did go on to have lives of their own.
Of course, nobody knows either way regarding CM and likely never will know. But it is worth pausing for a moment and reflecting on not only the random nature of fame and recognition, but also how many great discoveries we certainly have lost over the centuries because someone was not allowed to write, or speak or even to dream.
I don't know if things have changed much even now, but it has always been my greatest hope that the ubiquitous Internet would serve to unlock some of that untapped and otherwise lost human potential. IP laws, software patents, and the thugs seeking to control the flow of information aside, there are surely a lot of new voices out there to be heard, and new ideas they can share with us to help take us to the next great era of discovery and global progress. In the shadow of looming wars and unrest, AIDS and WMDs, and all the other noise of our discontent it is comforting to think that this might indeed be so.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
More Info
Some More Info
... in a proper fashion. :)
Red Dwarf... the "Holly Hop" episode, I believe.
I feel oddly sad that I recognized it so fast.
Read the article. The original design consisted of 26 parallel wires, 1 for each letter of the alphabet. No room for punctuation. That came later with mysterious theoretical paper v2.0, presumably written by CM++.
I stumbled accross this book on Project Gutenberg: Heroes of the Telegraph by John Munro. It's a fascinating account of the various inventions that led up to the telegraph. Oddly enough, the book was written when the telephone and phonograph were pretty new, so the author's speculations as to the future of these devices is interesting.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
Wasn't that the name of the guy from "Carter Beats the Devil" I think that's the name, that was a book about a magician and television and stuff...? Interesting book. I'm pretty sure the kid who invented television in that buck was named Philo Farnsworth. I have no idea of the historical accuracy of that, but it was a damn fine book.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
..IT'S CRAP!!!"
So I post something that I thought was funny and it gets moded down to a -1 flamebait. Seems someone is a bit touchy about the subject. Meanwhile the replies are up to +2. There's no justice for a karma whore.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
No, he didn't claim to have anything to do with authorizing the DARPA project that ultimately led to the internet, as he didn't become a member of congress until 1977, well after ARPANET was up and running. Your version of what he claimed he did is no more true than that of the parent poster.
Even though he was one of the leading congressional supporters of the internet in the 80s, he did overstate his own role in its creation even if the quote is read in context. This was a bad mistake and led to inevitable criticism- but only some of that criticism was justified. He never claimed he'd invented the internet.
ha ha, ha ha, ha. that was funny, just keep in mind that Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet.
What he did invent was the industrial research lab. Rather being a solitary inventor, he had scores of assistants, and he'd flit from project to project, giving direction, and taking credit.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You do know that Marconi's patents were eventually overturned in favour of Telsa?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Gauss, arguably the greatest mathematician who ever lived, (well along with his collegue Weber), did. See for example:
a us s+telegraph
http://www.google.com/search?hl=&cat=&meta=&q=g
Probably the same country that first notices I misspelled bamboo and Baird. Twice even!
:)
The link was working at the time I bookmarked it.
I've just checked, ~esr and / at tuxedo.org are also 404. Perhaps he's been infected by the slammer worm
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
that so many inventions are undisputed, at least publicly, for so long then suddenly many claimants cry that they know who the TRUE inventor is? I have seen this same cycle for airplane, telescope, radio, telephone, baseball, the computer, and coincidentally for the morse code itself. I am not suggesting that they are all lying, but should I now think when something new comes out, "I wonder who really invented this?".
Morse didn't invent the telegraph. He invented the Morse Code. Anyone who ever read a child's biography of Morse knows that. To claim anyone believed otherwise is the silliest form of revisionism ever. Of course if you go "Jaywalking" you can find people who believe anything, but to be a real "revisionist historian" you ought to revise a misunderstanding a bit more widespread than this.
TEST please ignore
Actually Baird was a poseur.
The first real TV system was assembled by the engineering dept of the BBC in a bake off that was set up essentially to shut Baird up.
They used a bunch of ideas that had been developed by others, in particular the cathode ray tube. They get the claim to invent TV because they were the first to do it over radio signals at a distance (as in Tele...)
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Ultimately, he who gets there furstest with the mostest wins. Marconi did far far more to create the radio as a viable technology than did Tesla. The fact that the US courts rules that the US scientist had primacy over the Italian scientist's US patents is hardly surprising. The US has a history of such things. Witness last weeks announcement of the American who "invented" radar bears me out.
Steve
Why? Duh, Because the Pony Express hadn't delivered my AOL disk yet. :p
me karma am bad
> The way current IP laws are heading the guy would STILL have the patent on it!
Inspired by this thread, I have applied for a patent on a one-click telegraph system.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It is the only punctuation mark to have absolutely no effect on pronunciation.
Not true, in some cases. I'm having trouble coming up with a non-lame example, but adding an apostrophe as a possessive to a word ending in "s" often adds an extra "es" sound to the end.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Wasn't it SBC that invented this? I'm pretty sure they've got the patent. I heard they were going to start demanding licensing for anyone using communication devices using electricity.
Anyone who has knows that Nicola Tesla, not only was the first to conceptualize wireless transmission, but the first to actually accomplish his goal of sending a wireless communication. Nicola Tesla is one of those invetors who is not well known, at least by the general public. He is known to be a "mad scientist" of sorts, but his other inventions/conceptions include rotating magnetic field, which in turn led to the development of alternating current, vertical take off and landing vehicles, and many other interesting and eclectic designs that boggle the mind, and entrance the imagination. Nicola Tesla was not only an inventor, but an innovator. His designs and ideas also helped people like Thomas Edison better the light bulb, and paved the way for the technological revolution we experience each day. I just want to give more credit to this guy, it's unfortunate that the U.S. Government shut him down the way they did, but I guess all is fair in love in war, right?
He's the first person I've seen use a telegramaphone.
I vote for best of the year.
I think that this is an excellent example for school teachers. There's always that one student in the class who always forgets to write his name at the top of the papers. Now the teacher can hold it against him...
"Do you want to be like that guy who invented the telegraph? Hmmm? Nobody knows his name because he didn't put it on his paper either..."
It ought to work better than my moms "Eat your breakfast! Don't you know kids are starving in China?!"
If I know my Scooby Doo kids right it was none other than Red Herring.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Nevertheless, I still found your post informative. I never knew what the first message sent was. I must have been daydreaming that day in school. :-)
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
You are right he merely "took the initiative in creating the internet"
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
You know nothing of CowboyMeal!
Your credit card information wants to be free.
beginning with M, let me think........
Regarding the Radio, while many people think Marconi, most realize that Marconi just built what Tesla designed and wrote about. (more about the Indian fellow below) Everyone is a Discoverer: I discovered Canada at the age of 5 - before then neither I nor any of my associates had heard of it. And I just discovered Qanat (Cool underground Irrigation system found in Mexico and Iran). Neither I nor any one I knew of had heard of them before. To get credit as a Discoverer you need to be the first of X group. An unknown indian discovered the New world first for his tribe and their friends. Then possibly an unknown Asian for Asia, then almost certainly a Viking for the Vikings, then Definitely Columbus discovered it for the southern Europeans. As for inventions, the truth is God invented everything. But we call someone that discovers how to apply a scientific principle in a new way, the inventor of any product that 1)was impossible without that discovery 2)at the time of their "invention", only needed that discovery to be possible. Otherwise you could say that Benjamin Franklin invented all electrical devices because he made some discoveries about electricity. Inventors are just discoverers with a pracitcal bent. And Discoverers are group related. Question: If we find out that intelligent life exists on other planets and that 10,000 years ago, they "invented" radio, are we going to say that Tesla, Marconi and that indian fellow did NOT invent the Radio? No. All three, Tesla, Marconi and the Indian fellow all qualify as inventors of the Radio. They invented it for different groups of people.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I hear about people debating over dumb things like who discovered America (It was Columbus! No, it was the Vikings! No, it was the Mongols! etc.), who invented the first computer (Eckert and Mauckley! No, it was Attenesoff! [It's been a while and I don't remember the spellings] Etc.), and who invented the telegraph. It's not really that important who invented it because someone would have invented it anyway. There is sort of a critical mass where people realize that "Hey, we need a (insert fabulous invention here)" and someone goes and invents it. Normally, people with the same idea are within a few years of each other, but sometimes its within a few months and other times its whoever can sprint to the patent office faster.