Alexander Graham Bell May Have Swiped Telephone Patent Says Book
While the details around Bell's patenting of the telephone have always been suspiciously murky—Bell's "first post!" submission was just hours before rival Elisha Gray's—the upcoming book The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret by Seth Shulman claims that Bell pretty much stole Gray's technical ideas whole cloth.
From a short AP preview of the book:
Shulman argues that Bell — aided by aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner — got an improper peek at patent documents Gray had filed, and that Bell was erroneously credited with filing first.I've read there were other reasons that Bell distanced himself from the Bell Telephone Company, probably more that he was a reluctant businessman than any guilt, but it's well known that much of the post-patent development of the telephone (like the liquid variable resistor) by the Bell Telephone Company came from work they cribbed from others....
For instance, Bell's transmitter design appears hastily written in the margin of his patent; Bell was nervous about demonstrating his device with Gray present; Bell resisted testifying in an 1878 lawsuit probing this question; and Bell, as if ashamed, quickly distanced himself from the telephone monopoly bearing his name.
Book Argues That Bell Stole Phone Idea [AP.Google.com via Techdirt]
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I first heard this in my intro telecom class in 1991. Not the first, not the last time such things have happened....
Surely it was Antonio Meucci who invented the telephone.
He sent in a pre-patent (a caveat) in 1871, but due to being injured in the Staten Island Ferry explosion, he failed to rnew the caveat in 1874.
Meucci had sent his models and sketches to the lab at western union - to the very lab that Bell worked in - but these models mysteriously vanished. When Bell patented the telephone, Meucci sued, but he died before the case could be settled.
Far fetched? Maybe, but bear in mind in 2004 the US house of representatives passed a resolution that "the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged."
An excellent book on the subject of large corporations with deep pockets lifting other people's inventions is "The Last Lone Inventor", which deals with how RCA took credit for then invention of television when they had copied all the core technologies from Farnsworth's prototypes.