Inventing the Telephone, Independently

An anonymous reader writes "There is a nice article about the history of the telephone at AmericanHeritage.com. Most of us know that Alexander Bell beat Elisha Gray to the patent office by mere hours to claim credit for the invention of the telephone, but did you know that two other inventors can also claim the invention, including Thomas Edison? Similar disputes about independent invention and patent ownership can be found regarding the television, the airplane, and the automobile. Maybe it really is true: the economic benefit of encouraging patents is like that of encouraging window breaking."

Comments

Re:Thomas Jefferson was agaist patents

[thx1138_az]

Ah! here's the link to Thomas Jefferson's take on patents. http://www.usewisdom.com/sayings/patentsj.html

Alexander Bell did not invent the telephone either

[Anonymous Coward]

Even back in 1876, the USPTO ignored prior art.
Philipp Reis' version of the telephone is from 1860.
Antonio Meucci's version of the telephone is from 1854.
Meucci's version is not really the invention of
the phone either, the principle probably was discovered
by Page in 1837, but Meucci *did* file for a US
patent, which he did not get simply because he
ran out of funds.

So in 1876 there was a rush to get a patent
on the phone, where four guys competed, none
of whom was anywhere close to being the
original inventor of the phone.

Thomas

Re:In 100 years

[Captain DaFt]

Well, if by "light bulb" you mean electric light, the phenomenom was well known in scientific circles back in 1820, as the folowing quote from "Oersted and the Discovery of Electromagnetism" at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/fgregory/oersted.htm
shows:

"Since I expected the greatest effect from a discharge associated with incandescence, I inserted in the circuit a very fine platinum wire above the place where the needle was located."

In other words, a current through a thin wire made electric light.
Not very practical though, only known power source was galvanic batteries (Which quickly ran down), and needed expensive platinum wire to keep the filament from melting or burning up right away.

The obvious solution was to encase a cheaper filament in a vaccum (ie: bulb), but good vaccums were difficult to achieve, and good filaments were also a problem at the time. They needed to be cheap, very thin, mechanically strong, electrically conductive, (but not too much) and with stand high temprature, not an easy combo to come by.

After some twenty years of research, English physicist and electrician, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan successfully demonstrated a true incandescent bulb in 1878 (a year earlier than Edison) http://www.maxmon.com/1878ad.htm

Not that they were the only two working on it, just the first two to produce a practical version that got public attention. (As I recall, a German and a Canadian also demonstrated similar lights at about the same time, but I can't remember their names.) }:-P