Slashdot Mirror
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."
little known fact: Al Gore also invented the telephone.
Duplicating good ideas should be expected. Something like calculus shouldn't be trademarked, etc.
But if you place the threshhold high enough, patents (esp. for a limited duration and done right) can be very much warranted and beneficial.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I seem to remember that Thomas Jefferson was against patents because he thought that invention was a natural course of evolution and that invention was inevitable product of the society and not the product of the individual. At least that's how I remember it.
Maybe it really is true: the economic benefit of encouraging patents is like that of encouraging window breaking.
That doesn't follow from the fact that inventions are often independently reinvented. Inventions are so often independently reinvented because new inventions depend at least as much on having all of the supporting technologies and ideas in place as they do on the cleverness of the inventor. Once the prerequisites are in place, it's not surprising that several bright people will simultaneously hit on the way to put them together. However, it's still possible that without the knowledge that patents will allow them to protect the results of their success, inventors might not be *motivated* to create their inventions.
It's equally possible that the existence of patents doesn't provide any incentive to potential inventors. I think the truth is somewhere in between, but the main point is that the frequency of multiple independent invention doesn't really say anything one way or the other about the efficacy of patents as motivators for creating and publishing new ideas.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
In other words, independent creation of invention occurs in part because the economic incentive of patents encourages many people to work on the problem simultaneously. Without that encouragement, perhaps none of them would have worked on the telephone and it might not have happened until much later.
Ah! here's the link to Thomas Jefferson's take on patents. http://www.usewisdom.com/sayings/patentsj.html
I don't normally post to Slashdot anymore, but I just want to point out that Elisha Gray is my great, great, great grandfather. Not that I saw any of the money. Ah well. It's something to tell the kids.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Yes, patents can be abused, as with submarine patents. And patents can slow technological progress, as with the wing warping patent battles. But I don't think it logically follows that patents are always bad, and that technological progress would be faster without them. After all, the patent system was created to reduce trade secrecy and and encourage invention, and it certainly does that, however imperfectly.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
In 100 years time, Bill Gates will be credited with inventing the computer, and Al Gore the first public computer network. Sad, but you know it's true. Who invented the light bulb?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The one thing you will never see in this lifetime is Bill Gates standing in line at the Patent Office while Steve Ballmer barricades the front door.
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
Bridges come in all shapes and sizes, from the 4,200 ft span of the Golden Gate to the pipes under the road at the top end of Sandy Creek. If anything software is even more diverse, from programs with tens of millions of lines of code down to simple routines of a line or two to automate some mundane task.
Constructing a bridge costs, as does developing software. The vast majority of bridges are public property. They have been funded and built by such a large pool of people - government's of one form or another - for the common good, for use by anyone at anytime. However there is a substantial pool of private bridges. Most of these are bridges built for specific non standard vehicles such as trains. Others are built for the conveyance of standard vehicles but tolls are charged for a variety of reasons.
Starting from the precept "We are human, we can do anything and get to anywhere we want", a toll bridge must provide a cheaper and/or quicker alternative to other ways of getting from A to B. To invest in the toll bridge its constructor determines that he can charge a particular toll, at that toll he will get a particular amount of traffic and that this income will repay the cost of building the bridge. The constructor needs to satisfy themselves about the surety of the factors that affect the bridge usage. They minimize their risk by identifying as many factors that will adversely affect bridge traffic as possible and blocking these adverse factors where possible.
Where huge bridges are required, the Golden Gate, Sydney Harbour and the like, tolls can be seen to be fair without imposing monopoly conditions on the general populace. No conditions need imposing on ferry services, no conditions need imposing blocking alternate routes, the bridge operates in a standard competitive environment because it is so obviously a beneficial object.
On less obviously beneficial bridges the actions of people are substantial factors that affect the financial viability of the bridge. Controlling these actions is a form of monopoly rights granted by the relevant government(s). These rights include: restricting other river crossings; guarantees of road construction to ensure their bridge is the prime route over the river; concessions that the investors have the sole rights to offer peripheral services, service centres offering fuel and food etc. These rights are generally granted for a limited time and the bridge often reverts to public ownership at the expiration of this time.
This model is open to abuse. The rights granted may be disproportionate to the benefits. A bridge may be built over a small creek for little cost and the constructor granted a perpetual ban on any other bridges being built 20 miles in either direction. Or the government may agree that other routes will be closed or allowed to degrade, or they may put restrictions on other services, or they may allow the operator to insist that users of the bridge utilize other services before they can use the bridge etc. etc.
Transferring this view of bridges to intellectual property one would have to conclude that there are no Golden Gates or Sydney Harbour's. Every method developed has alternatives that can be simply developed and deployed. Intellectual property monopoly rights can only be related to the pipes under the headwaters of Sandy Creek with a guaranteed monopolies 20 miles in either direction. They are completely out of proportion with the benefits these pipes offer.
In fact the situation is worse than this. A better metaphor is monopoly rights to a pipe under a train line. The pipe owners charge not only a toll for using the bridge but force you to load your car onto their railway carriage and force you to utilize their passenger service for the 200 yard journey over the Sandy Creek floodplain. The alternative is to drive an extra 50 miles through the mountains because they have monopoly veto rights over any road bridges over Sandy Creek.
Another alternative, that can be likened to op
The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime - Floyd, Pink
Patents are the exact opposite of a true free-market capitalistic system. In this case, the "goods" are ideas, and there is only one seller that controls the market for it. That seller determines the price and who can/cannot buy this idea. This is clearly a monopoly. Capitalism can only work when there's millions of sellers and millions of buyers. When such conditions do not exist, socialism needs to be instituted.
Patents prevent a true free market for ideas, and yet, in our current system, the value of the ideas are controlled by the patent holder. The system of patents need to change, to include things like price controls of the ideas, or to allow multiple patent holders if developed independently.
The problem with patents is that most people think that patent owners are heroes and if your country awards more patents it is an indicator on how inventive your country is. People also believe that patents encourage a competitive industry.
Newsflash: Patents = monopolies
A patent is a monopoly on a technology. The patent office is a government institution that hands out several thousand monopolies each year. Most of these monopolies are awarded to foreign corporations.
Why would someone who believes in market economy and free competition support the government handing out monopolies?
How can handing out monopolies to corporations increase competition in the market place?
Why is Microsoft, a convicted monopolist, applying for, and getting a large number of legal monopolies? Why does the government sue MS for abusing their monopoly, and then give them thousands of legally enforcable monopolies?
)9TSS
The real inventor of telephone is Antonio Meucci, Bell stole the idea from him.
What is amazing is the fact the two names quoted in the original post are Bell and Gray : The person who tried to patent the idea.
Recognition of Meuci by the Congress
But I don't think it logically follows that patents are always bad
But it need not, for patents to be a net disadvantage.
After all, the patent system was created to reduce trade secrecy and and encourage invention, and it certainly does that, however imperfectly.
I'm not sure about that.
At the research facility where I worked before the current one that I'm working at, important inventions that really provided an edge over the competition was always kept a trade secret? Why? Because everyone in the industry cross-licensed with each other, because otherwise nobody could actually build anything. Patenting something was just giving it to the competition. Patents were reserved for less useful things.
The net effect was to keep anyone new from entering the market. Patents don't have to all be perfect -- if there are two hundred patents held by incumbents waiting to attack anyone wanting to enter the market, most of the patents can be thrown out and the newcomer is still going to have a hard time entering the market.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
But with people breaking windows, society has less *stuff* total, which is the measure economists use. When you buy a new car, you'll sell yours to someone else, not just junk it (unless it's quite old.) So you'll have a new car, and someone else will get your car. That's twice as many cars as there was before, and one's nicer. Cleary an improvement. With windows, there's just a replacement of the window, not anything new.
Also, people who "hoard" money also help the economy (well, today they do, since basically no one keeps it in a box buried in the backyard). They'll invest it in stocks, or bonds, or just put it in the bank, who'll then invest it. And investement is good for the economy.
In short, yes, all economists agree about the broken window fallacy.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
IMHO, copyrights can't survive the information age, but patents are far more evil. The imposition of patents in most cases is nothing short of plain physical coercion. The fact is that 99% of invention is progressive, just another stage built upon the countless other layers of understanding and invention already out there. The only competition that patents promote is trying to lock out new inventions that might allow new technology to bypass your patent portfolio.
That simply isn't true. There are issues with the patent system, but if you feel that 99% of the time they cause harm, you really just don't understand the entire issue. I can think of at least one industry that would literally die over night if patents were suddenly done away with.
Pharmaceutical research would pretty much grind to a halt without IP laws. It can take up to a billion dollars to push a single drug from discovery, to lab testing, past regulation, and into production. No one is going to drop a billion dollars just to have their closest competitor copy what they just achieved at not cost to themselves. It simply would not happen.
This is the case in a lot of leading edge fields. In a lot of fields you need to create something that is amazing complex and capital intensive. You need to drop millions or billions of dollars on developing a product before it becomes viable. IP protection is the only thing that gives you any sort of assurance that if you find something, someone just can't steal it.
I am not saying that the current IP system is all roses. In fact, it down right sucks in many ways. That said, claiming that IP in general is a great evil that needs to be done away with is utterly ignoring the role it serves in helping to spur R&D work.
Several people invented the telephone, independently, partly because they all wanted patent-enforced monopolies that could make them rich.
Maybe I'm chasing an impossible dream, but I have to wonder if there's a better way to provide a strong incentive to create ideas and other information other than by placing artificial restrictions on the availability and use of that information. I've got no ideas here.
I know there are many claims to who is the inventor of the Telephone. There are similar claims about the TV.
The link to the "inventor" of the tv fails to completely mention John Logie Baird.
This very eccentric scotsman was a pioneer in TV development. There is still to this day a great debate amongst historians about who was first.
http://www.infed.org/walking/wa-baird.htm
The first TV pictures he sent were down a phone line!
At least the place where the worlds first TV station broadcast from is still standing and is a great monument to those involved.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
...The article says: Bell was not the first to invent the telephone (that's why in Italy we honor Meucci for that, even though the idea was probably even earlier) but he was the first to patent it, because he was richer and had better lawyer. It seems that nothing has changed in the past 150 years after all.
Ander
@=
source
I wonder what it would be like if everyone who invented the same device could receive their own patents as long as their applications were filed before any were published.
But this still cuts out all those who legitimately develop something obvious after it has been patented. What is obvious to one person may not be obvious to a patent examiner. Just because it was not obvious to a patent examiner does not mean it would not have been obvious to any number of others who are at the top of their fields and should have the right to do research without the landmines laid everywhere for them by the government-granted monopolies or even oligopolies you propose. It would still be badly broken. It denies others the right to independently develop without paying taxes to the one who hired the lawyers first.
There was no TV patent dispute: Farnsworth invented it, RCA attempted to steal it and failed. The history of RCA under Sarnof is truly disgusting. The company fortune was built on patents stolen from Major Armstrong who invented the super regenerative, super heterodyne, and FM radios as well as the phase lock loop. Armstrong committed suicide after he lost - in one of the worst court decisions in recorded history.- the FM case to RCA
Most of the abuses of the patent system would simply disappear if only individuals could own patents - instead of companies.
and the world would be better for it.
Every hour of overtime you put in is an hour somebody else could have been paid to work.
And if everyone were working 20, maybe 30 hours a week, there would be sufficient product for all. And we'd all have more time for taking care of our health, our relationships with family and friends, and other really important things.
I have a feeling that Meucci's mental problems and personal life problems delayed the original patent, but that there is little doubt now that he actually invented the telephone.
It's almost certain that Bell stole the patent for the telephone with a little help from Edward B Grant at Western Union (who kept putting off Meucci's attempts to give a demonstration) and certain individuals at the Patent Office who coincidentally 'lost' Meucci's paperwork. Far from being innovitive, Bell was nothing more than a slimy shit - at least as far as being involved in the actual invention of the telephone is concerned.
The United States started fraud proceedings against Bell, which were only dropped with the death of Meucci in 1896.
And to think it took until 2001 for the US senate to recognize the fact that Meucci did actually invent it. This great milestone would not have been achieved without the deep investigative work of Basilio Catania.
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Bah. Why should anyone care what this "Thomas Jefferson" character thinks? He sounds like some kind of slashdot hippie.
Actually, I think that in cases like this, that NOBODY should be awarded a patent.
Although the current practice is to award a patent to whoever applies first, I think that the fact that subsequent, substantially similar, patents are applied for before the first one is made public or awarded should be considered a prima facie evidence that the invention is 'obvious'.
Seriously. I understand that obviousness is a slippery thing. Often, the best ideas are the simplest and may seem obvious in retrospect, so the patent office and courts are fairly careful about determining obviousness. However, if two or more inventers independently come up with the same idea at about the same time, then that should be considered proof that the idea was obvious. Since the patent office keeps filings secret until after a patent is awarded, the time between the original filing and the awarding of a patent for the idea is a time when no other inventor could know that a similar idea has been filed. So, another, similar, filing during this period aught to be considered proof that the idea is obvious and non patentable.
A large number of patents would get thrown out if this standard was adopted, but, since it's clear that there is a serious problem with the patent system, I don't think that this would be a bad thing and would actually provide us with a much better system.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)