The First Phone Call Was 133 Years Ago

magacious writes "March 10 is the 133rd anniversary of the first telephone call. It occurred between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson back on this day in 1876. But there is some debate about whether Bell is actually the rightful owner of the crown for such invention. Having worked on the idea of transmitting speech using electricity for some time, Bell filed his patent on 14 February 1876, either just before or just after his main rival for the title of inventor of the telephone, Elisha Gray, filed his own. Bell won the patent and Gray died in obscurity."

Comments

Antonio Meucci

[Shin-LaC]

was using his electromagnetic telephone to talk to his wife from his basement lab to their second-floor bedroom in 1856.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[Kirys]

Meucci was the real owner of the idea of the phone. But he was almost forgotten, only recently it received some credits.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[Anonymous Coward]

"In 2002 the U. S. House of Representatives passed a bill recognizing Meucci's accomplishment and stating that "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell."

From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meucci

Re:Antonio Meucci

[Anonymous Coward]

H. Res. 269
In the House of Representatives, U.S.,
June 11, 2002.
Whereas Antonio Meucci, the great Italian inventor, had a career that was both extraordinary and tragic;
Whereas, upon immigrating to New York, Meucci continued to work with ceaseless vigor on a project he had begun in Havana, Cuba, an invention he later called the `teletrofono', involving electronic communications;
Whereas Meucci set up a rudimentary communications link in his Staten Island home that connected the basement with the first floor, and later, when his wife began to suffer from crippling arthritis, he created a permanent link between his lab and his wife's second floor bedroom;
Whereas, having exhausted most of his life's savings in pursuing his work, Meucci was unable to commercialize his invention, though he demonstrated his invention in 1860 and had a description of it published in New York's Italian language newspaper;
Whereas Meucci never learned English well enough to navigate the complex American business community;
Whereas Meucci was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay his way through the patent application process, and thus had to settle for a caveat, a one year renewable notice of an impending patent, which was first filed on December 28, 1871;
Whereas Meucci later learned that the Western Union affiliate laboratory reportedly lost his working models, and Meucci, who at this point was living on public assistance, was unable to renew the caveat after 1874;
Whereas in March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, who conducted experiments in the same laboratory where Meucci's materials had been stored, was granted a patent and was thereafter credited with inventing the telephone;
Whereas on January 13, 1887, the Government of the United States moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation, a case that the Supreme Court found viable and remanded for trial;
Whereas Meucci died in October 1889, the Bell patent expired in January 1893, and the case was discontinued as moot without ever reaching the underlying issue of the true inventor of the telephone entitled to the patent; and
Whereas if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged.
Attest:
Clerk.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... american technology history rewriting, according to the president of the USA america even invented the automobile. I am glad Daimler and Benz are dead already and have been for a long time :-)
I am not even sure if Edison really was the inventor of the lightbulb afair a russian was first but did not patent it!

Re:Antonio Meucci

[ubrgeek]

Meucci should have called ahead to let them know he was on his way. ;)

Re:Antonio Meucci

[VShael]

Not that it matters much, but Congress passed a resolution on June 11th, 2002, recognising him as the inventor of the telephone.

Also, people should know that Meucci sent his patent designs to the lab where Bell worked. And they went "missing".

There's a whole shady side to that story which is not really acknowledged in the official history.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[hey!]

I think the audio telephone was one of those ideas whose time had come. It's not as if it sprung from the head of some individual genius, a lot of people were working in that direction; take any one of them out of the picture and the result wouldn't be much different.

Ironically, the telephone was more or less an inevitable outgrowth of work on improving the capacity of long distance cables to carry telegraphs -- a digital medium. In a sense, we've come full circle.

One of the ideas that people were working on is what we'd call frequency division multiplexing: sending multiple simultaneous telegraph signals on the same wire but encoded on carriers of different frequencies. Once you started to work in that direction an audio telephone would be simple, relatively speaking. So somebody would have "invented" it, because plenty of people were working along those lines.

The lone genius inventor is a mythical idea, one that distorts our thinking about stuff like intellectual property. There are genius inventors, to be sure, but surely there were men like Thomas Edison or Nicola Tesla that lived in the dark ages. The reason we've never heard of them is that even a genius needs other people's ideas to build upon.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[jabuzz]

Never heard of the Russian angle but Swan in the U.K. invented one at the same time as Edison. Big patent battle, ended up joining forces and cornering the market.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[Chris Mattern]

I am not even sure if Edison really was the inventor of the lightbulb afair a russian was first but did not patent it!

It is universally acknowledged that Edison did not invent the light bulb. What he did was make it practical by devising a filament that lasted more than a few hours before burning out.

Re:Antonio Meucci

[iocat]

Bingo! I wish I had mod points. When you look at a lot of major inventions -- the telephone, the car, the lightbulb, TV, digital general purpose computers, etc. -- you'll find that regardless of whoever eventually was credited with the invention, there were any number of people working on the same problem, at about the same rate, and making very close breakthroughs, at the same time. Sometimes ideas are just "in the air." Typically one guy gets credit, which is sort of sad, but that's kind of the way it is -- at least with lay people. Anyone who is a historian or reads a little more deeply will evetually learn all the other peopel and their possibly claims / contributions. Because there are so many people who were clearly on the right track, you will also get a lot of arguments.

for instance, if you look here , you'll see three groups, each of which has a strong case for being said to be the inevntor of the modern computer (Konrad Zuse, who built a programmable electro-mechanical computer in 1936, Anastoff and Berry who build a digital computer -- that was not general purpose or programmable in 1942, and Eckert and Mauchley, who built a vacuum tube base, programmable, general purpose computer in 1946). I won't get into the details, but it becomes a religious thing at some point -- I once fell out with a friend because I refused to accept Anastoff as the sole inventor of the computer. (My friend was from Iowa).

Gray died in obscurity

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Of course, the light bulb was only invented in 1879.

Re:Gray died in obscurity

[tsjaikdus]

Edison created something that could actually be used. That is including the electrical grid, switches, powermeters, bulb fitting and so on that was all needed to make the bulb glow. All this stuff didn't really exist back then. And a lot of new inventions that came out of that were indeed patented.

I think the patent system is put to good use in this case. If it were for Swan or some other introvert nerd, we would still be reading by candlelight.

Re:Gray died in obscurity

[Shakrai]

And not by Edison, who just got the patent...

Edison was one of the original patent/FUD trolls. A lot of people seem to think those tactics are new but in reality businesses have been engaging in them for a long time. Edison even went so far as to electrocute animals (including an elephant) during the "war of the currents" to try and scare people away from a competing product. He also tried to change the term from "electrocuted" to "Westinghoused".

Research

[EEPROMS]

Some of the latest research into Bells own lab notes is showing that he saw Grays pre patent applications for a liquid based microphone before hand. In fact what gave it away was his (Bells) notes are an exact copy of Grays patent that and the fact Bell never even looked at this type of configuration until he went to Washington then changed his research completely.

Re:Research

[Lumpy]

Yup. Bell's "invention" was completely based on other people's ideas.

Just like how edison stole most of his "ideas" from Tesla.

Patents dont encourage innovation. The only make the first person to file it rich. Which discourages the sharing of ideas and information for fear that some rich jerk like edison or Bell will come along and patent your idea first. There are documented cases all throughout american and european history that Patents hampered scientific innovation and industrial progress.

Re:Research

[Reality Master 101]

Patents dont encourage innovation. The only make the first person to file it rich. Which discourages the sharing of ideas and information for fear that some rich jerk like edison or Bell will come along and patent your idea first.

You're completely contradicting yourself. Ones of the major *points* of patents is to encourage sharing of ideas. Without patents, everyone would hoard their ideas, because there would be no legal protection -- the second any rich person heard your idea, they would start mass-producing it, leaving you out in the cold.

The example here shows what happens when you share without a patent -- someone beats you to the patent office! But note that once the small investor gets there, he can share all he wants with legal protection.

Now this is the cue for anti-patent people to start listing a litany of cases where patents didn't protect some little guy. But that doesn't change the millions of cases where it does, that doesn't get the publicity.

Re:the message:

[Goffee71]

The reply: I, for one, welcome my now slightly distant overlord

133

[microbee]

is such an important number that it's worth a news story by its own

Re:133

[lilo_booter]

Indeed - apparently no one died that year - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/133

Re:133

[MosesJones]

Errr not ver 1337 are you? Now clearly the 1337 anniversary will be more significant but after all this is the telephone therefore 133 Telephone anniversary or 133t to give it its correct name is a highly significant geek anniversary.

Can't believe this wasn't obvious.

Re:133

[AliasMarlowe]

is such an important number that it's worth a news story by its own

But of course! It's a happy octagonal Harshad integer, and a Blum semiprime. We should read news stories about it every day!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/133_(number)

Re:Such advances!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

More like "can you hear me? CAN YOU HEAR ME? HELLO?? *beep*beep*beep* Ah f**ing Verizon!"

and the second call

[petes_PoV]

started "can I speak to Mr Alexander Bell" .... Hello Mr. Bell, how are you today. I wonder if you would take a few minutes to answer some questions ... hangs up in disgust

Re:the message:

[conureman]

Watson, come here. I need you.

Re:Patent sucks

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Er.. no. Patents are good. It's only *some* patents that aren't, like software patents, and generally all obvious patents granted by shitty examiners.

The fact that Bell was able to patent his invention means that (1) he was able to profit from it, and (2) his invention was fully disclosed and available to the rest of humanity.

In short, patents are a good thing. Don't mindlessly follow the Slashdot groupthink please...

Re:Patent sucks

[MichaelSmith]

The fact that Bell was able to patent his invention means that (1) he was able to profit from it, and (2) his invention was fully disclosed and available to the rest of humanity.

But as the summary implies and history records the patent application in this case was a race to the patent office. Several people had developed working telephones at that point.

So while it is good that Bell benefited from this invention it is bad that other inventors did not.

Gray was a professional inventor

[Skurge357]

If I remember correctly, Elisha Gray's patent application for this was one of several that he submitted that day, only a few hours after Bell's went in.

Re:Patent sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

> So while it is good that Bell benefited from this invention it is bad that other inventors did not.

There was no need for him to profit, given the large amount of people inventing the concept, the idea was not non-obvious, and as such would have become public knowledge in the short term anyway.
Thus the patent, particularly since it was wrong anyway, only served to add cost and hinder innovation. It was of advantage only for Mr. Bell and of a disadvantage to all of society, or in other words the exact opposite of what patents were supposed to be.

The real reason Bell got the patent

[rollingcalf]

They gave it to him instead of others who developed a phone, because they thought history would prefer that somebody named "Bell" invented the telephone, like how Sir Thomas Crapper is credited with inventing the flush toilet even though he really didn't invent it.

Re:Patent sucks

[MichaelSmith]

In many cases the reality is that new things were invented by many people working in parallel and sharing the use of public knowledge. It might be better if patents recognise this by being granted to multiple people.

And Tomorrow....

[DavidD_CA]

And tomorrow marks the 133rd anniversary of the first telemarker.

Died in Obscurity?!!

[krygny]

How could he have died in obscurity if we're discussing him today? I'm still trying to find out who, from the US, invented the automobile (according to Obama). Now, *THAT GUY* died in obscurity.

Re:the message:

[JustOK]

But I WAS FIRST POST!

Sincerely,

Elisha Gray

At the time patent duration was shorter

[tlambert]

At the time patent duration was shorter, per the patent act of 1790, and was decided by a board, not to exceed 14 years. In addition, it wasrequested that you have a working prototype of your invention that you could demonstrate for the patent office for the purposes of the parent examination process. There were other hard requirements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Act_of_1790.

So it's a little disingenuous to claim this as an example of why patents are a bad thing.

-- Terry

Don't forget Philip Reis

[sapone]

...who also invented an early telephone. In 1861!

Re:the message:

[FatLittleMonkey]

Watson, come here. I need you.

"Oh Mr. Bell, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear you say that!"

Re:Patent sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly.
I know a friend who is an inventor.
His thinking is very different and his inventions are also quite different - and which I feel are very good for the society.

Now, he is pursuing his inventions just because of the concept of patent. He is not at all a businessman - he is extremely shy and does not speak to anyone. So if concept of patents are not there, he would not even pursue his inventions because he is sure to lose out in the game.

Even now, somebody might make a fool of him, but atleast he has the hope to make money using his inventions. Such people would lose out - and thereby the society - if patents are removed.

Anybody Here Remember Rotary Dials?

[aquatone282]

Yeah? Well the rest of you can GET OFF MY LAWN!

Good old family history

[Photo_Nut]

I like this story. See, I married into the family... Mr. Watson is my wife's great great grandfather. He left his family with an estate in New Hampshire which we go to every year and in this estate there are 2 telephones. An interesting family tradition in her branch of the family is to give the male children the middle name of Watson. Anyway, to place a call, you crank a generator which causes a bell to ring at the other end of the line, then the person at the other end of the line picks up and the call is connected.

Today we all have cell phones (and ironically, the cell phone reception isn't that great - verizon or AT&T - we brought an iPhone last summer to the estate, and it browsed the web painfully slowly - a 28K modem with AOL and all the ads would beat it), but how many people can say that they have talked on a phone made by hand by the inventor of the telephone in this day and age where cell phones can make video calls and store books and play video games and browse the web?

Re:the message:

[cbiltcliffe]

No, I'm sure it was:

"This is the second notice that the factory warranty may be expiring on your car!....."

Elish Gray hardly obscure

[tjstork]

I love how everyone loves to paint poor Elisha Gray as this hard working guy, but, he was actually by no means a poor man himself. He had a nice little business that he sold to Western Union for a healthy chunk of change. Viewed in that context, what we're really talking about here is the then giant Western Union, via Elisha Gray, versus the then tiny Bell, fighting over the telephone. If anyone was the "tiny" guy fighting the system at that time, it was in fact, Alexander Graham Bell!

Antonio Meucci here

[Anonymous Coward]

I sumbmitted the story four times but it was rejected.

Re:Patent sucks

[TheLink]

As I said, you still have to register your invention to be eligible for the prize.

See: http://www.uspto.gov/go/fees/

Lotteries and bookies are familiar with the concept. They manage somehow, some even make money in the process.

And some companies might even sponsor an endowment or even the prizes every year.

Sure inventors or the companies they work for won't get billions of dollars in prize money. But should they need or get that in the first place?

The marketing budget for US drug companies tends to be bigger than their R&D budget. So I'm sure they and other companies will manage somehow. I also doubt Intel will stop investing in R&D if AMD et all can copy what they do (it's not so trivial to copy Intel even if you can read their inventions and patents - you can't reproduce their entire fab).

Whatever it is, we will need something else assuming an increasing rate of invention - the current patent system won't scale well. As the number of specialized fields increases it'll be harder and harder for an examiner to work out whether a patent should be granted or not.

Of course if we are assuming the rate of invention stagnates or even declines, then that's different. I hope that's not what we're planning for.

Re:the message:

[negRo_slim]

Alexander Graham Bell:
Well, we did it Watson. What an afternoon. We finally perfected the first telephone.

Thomas Watson:
Yeah, uh, hey listen, somebody called me today. Uh, whoever it was, said some very sexual things, very angry, sexual things.

Alexander Graham Bell:
Oh, really? Probably just some teenagers somewhere... damn them.

Thomas Watson:
Well, well that's, that's the thing. I mean, there's, there's only two phones, in the, well, in the world and one of them is in my office and the other one is in your office and those two didn't even exist until a few hours ago.

Alexander Graham Bell:
Yikes, I could use a distraction right now.