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

Interesting...

[y00tz]

little known fact: Al Gore also invented the telephone.

Re:Interesting...

[ShieldW0lf]

I don't think the "broken windows" analogy is a good one. A better one might be the tradition of some native american tribes to hold "wealth burning" parties, where the rich would demonstrate their wealth by burning it, thus necessitating the creation of more.

By taking a situation where there exists "plenty" and using legal fictions to create scarcity, they are clearly destroying wealth.

and like Calculus

[geoffrobinson]

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.

Re:and like Calculus

[eric76]

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.

One obvious effect would be that you could license it from whichever inventor with whome you could come to the best agreement.

I certainly can't see any logical reason why anyone who invented something independently of another should be deprived of the fruits of their own effort.

Thomas Jefferson was agaist patents?

[thx1138_az]

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.

Doesn't follow

[swillden]

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.

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

Elisha Gray

[Dimwit]

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.

You can have too much of a good thing

[PapayaSF]

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.

In 100 years

[DNS-and-BIND]

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?

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

The Modern Era...

[__aaclcg7560]

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.

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

Patents good?

[typical]

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.

Who Did invent the TV?

[RotateLeftByte]

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.