Alexander Graham Bell - Patent Thief?

DynaSoar writes "MSNBC is carrying an AP article reviewing a book, due out January 7, that claims to show definitive evidence that Bell stole the essential idea for telephony from Elisha Gray. Author Seth Shulman shows that Bell's notebooks contain false starts, and then after a 12-day gap during which he visited the US Patent Office, suddenly show an entirely different design, very similar to Gray's design for multiplexing Morse code signals. Shulman claims that Bell copied the design from Gray's patent application and was improperly given credit for earlier submission, with the help of a corrupt patent examiner and aggressive lawyers. Shulman also claims that fear of being found out is the reason Bell distanced himself from the company that carried his name. And if Gray Telephone doesn't seem to roll off the tongue, Shulman also noted that both of them were two decades behind the German inventor Johann Philipp Reis, who produced the first working telephony system."

Comments

how timely

[Hognoxious]

Brought to you by the isn't-this-just-a-little-bit-too-late department.

That's interesting.

[wcrowe]

So he's sort of the Bill Gates of the 19th century.

Read the patent number!

[192939495969798999]

Bell Stamp: I invented the telephone.

Gray: You stole it from me, Elisha Gray.

Bell: Read the patent number, bitch!

There are so many victims!

[FredFredrickson]

I'm another victim of this type of fraud. It seems that there needs to be a safeguard against this type of thing.

I invented a little button that allows you to buy things by clicking a single button once, but I keep getting threatened with law suits!! THIS NEEDS TO STOP! I WANT MY ROYALTIES! Damn you patent squatters!

Re:The most interesting thing about this controver

[Shakrai]

That's a lot of people; is it really so strange that two people with have the same idea

Does that mean if L. Ron hadn't invented Scientology somebody else would have? ;)

Scary thought.....