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Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci ( , ; 13 April 1808 – 18 October 1889) was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy. "Antonio Meucci's Illness". The New York Times, 9 March 1889; accessed 25 February 2009.Nese & Nicotra 1989, pp. 35–52. Meucci is best known for developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone.Several Italian encyclopedias claim Meucci as the inventor of the telephone, including: – the "Treccani" – the Italian version of Microsoft digital encyclopedia, Encarta – Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti ( Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Arts).
Meucci set up a form of voice-communication link in his Staten Island, New York, home that connected the second-floor bedroom to his laboratory. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the USPTO in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound by undulatory electric current. Despite the longstanding general crediting of Bell with the accomplishment, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities supported celebrations of Meucci's 200th birthday in 2008 using the title "Inventore del telefono" (Inventor of the telephone). Manifestazioni per il bicentenario della nascita di Antonio Meucci, archive date 22 July 2011. The U.S. House of Representatives in a resolution in 2002 also acknowledged Meucci's work in the invention of the telephone, H.Res.269 Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives to honor the life and achievements of 19th Century Italian-American inventor Antonio Meucci, and his work in the invention of the telephone. 11 June 2002, retrieved 14 February 2022 although the U.S. Senate did not join the resolution and the interpretation of the resolution is disputed.
In November 1821, at the age of 13, he was admitted to Florence Academy of Fine Arts as its youngest student, where he studied chemical and mechanical engineering. He ceased full-time studies two years later due to insufficient funds, but continued studying part-time after obtaining employment as an assistant gatekeeper and customs official for the Florentine government.
In May 1825, because of the celebrations for the childbirth of Marie Anna of Saxony, wife of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Meucci conceived a powerful propellant mixture for flares. The fireworks went out of his control, causing damages and injuries in the celebration's square. Meucci was arrested and suspected of conspiracy against the Grand Duchy.
Meucci later became employed at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as a stage technician, assisting Artemio Canovetti.
In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of speaking tube to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro of Pergola. This telephone was constructed on the principles of pipe-telephones used on ships and still functions. He married costume designer Esterre Mochi, who was employed in the same theatre, on 7 August 1834.
In 1848 his contract with the governor expired. Meucci was asked by a friend's doctors to work on Franz Anton Mesmer's therapy system on patients with rheumatism. In 1849, he developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat illness and subsequently experimentally developed a device through which one could hear inarticulate human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (talking telegraph). Meucci's original drawings. Italian Society of Electrotechnics aei.it; accessed 15 June 2015. .
In 1850, the third renewal of Meucci's contract with Don Francisco Martí y Torrens expired, and his friendship with General Giuseppe Garibaldi made him a suspect citizen in Cuba. On the other hand, the fame reached by Samuel F. B. Morse in the United States encouraged Meucci to make his living through inventions.Meucci, Sandra. Antonio and the Electric Scream: The Man Who Invented the Telephone, Branden Books, Boston, 2010; , pp. 15–21, 24, 36–37, 47–52, 70–73, 92, 98, 100.
The Meuccis would live there for the remainder of their lives. On Staten Island he helped several countrymen committed to the Italian unification movement and who had escaped political persecution. Meucci invested the substantial capital he had earned in Cuba into a tallow candle factory (the first of its kind in the Americas) employing several Italian exiles. For two years Meucci hosted friends at his cottage, including General Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Colonel Paolo Bovi Campeggi, who arrived in New York two months after Meucci. They worked in Meucci's factory.
In 1854, Meucci's wife Esterre became an invalid due to rheumatoid arthritis. Meucci continued his experiments.
Translated:
Meucci devised an electromagnetic telephone as a way of connecting his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus being able to communicate with his wife. Between 1856 and 1870, Meucci developed more than 30 different kinds of telephones on the basis of this prototype.
A postage stamp was produced in Italy in 2003 that featured a portrait of Meucci. Antonio Meucci stamp, comunicazioni.it; archived 26 August 2003. . Around 1858, artist Nestore Corradi sketched Meucci's communication concept. His drawing was used to accompany the stamp in a commemorative publication of the Italian Postal and Telegraph Society.
Meucci intended to develop his prototype but did not have the financial means to keep his company afloat in order to finance his invention. His candle factory went bankrupt and Meucci was forced to unsuccessfully seek funds from rich Italian families. In 1860, he asked his friend Enrico Bandelari to look for Italian capitalists willing to finance his project. However, military expeditions led by Garibaldi, in what was about to become Italy, had made the geopolitical situation too unstable for anybody to invest.
In August 1870 Meucci reportedly was able to capture a transmission of articulated human voice at the distance of a mile by using a copper plate as a conductor, insulated by cotton. He called this device the "telettrofono". While he was recovering from injuries that befell him in a boiler explosion aboard a Staten Island ferry, the Westfield, Meucci's financial and health state was so bad that his wife sold his drawings and devices to a second-hand dealer to raise money. The tragic tale of the telephone's real inventor, Antonio Meucci
Meucci emphasizes that the conductors "for mouth and ears ... must be metallic", but does not explain why this would be desirable.Caveat pp. 17 bottom line – 18 top line He mentions "communication with the ground"Caveat, p. 17 bottom. but does not suggest that a ground return must complete a circuit if only "the wire" (singular, not plural) is used between the sender's mouth piece and the receiver's ear piece, with one or the other person being electrically insulated from the ground by means of glass insulators ("...consists in isolating two persons ... by placing them upon glass insulators; employing glass, for example, at the foot of the chair or bench on which each sits, and putting them in communication by means of a telegraph wire").Caveat p. 17, 3rd paragraph.
Robert V. Bruce, a biographer of Bell, asserted that Meucci's caveat could never have become a patent because it never described an electric telephone.
Other researchers have pointed to inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Bruce's account of the invention of the telephone, firstly with the name used by Meucci to describe his invention—Bruce refers to Meucci's device as a "telephone", not as the "telettrofono". Bruce's reporting of Meucci's purported relationship with Dr. Seth R. Beckwith has been deemed inaccurate. Beckwith, a former surgeon and general manager of the Overland Telephone Company of New York, "had acquired a substantial knowledge in the telephonic field and had become an admirer of Meucci". In 1885, he became general manager of the Globe Telephone Company, which had "started an action attempting to involve the government in hindering U.S. Bell's monopoly." However, Meucci and his legal representative had cautioned Beckwith against misusing Meucci's name for financial gain after Beckwith founded a company in New Jersey named the Meucci Telephone Company. Profile, chezbasilio.org; accessed 15 June 2015.
Not only did Beckwith's Globe Telephone Company base its claims against the Bell Telephone Company on Meucci's caveat, but the claims were also supported by approximately 30 affidavits, which stated that Meucci had repeatedly built and used different types of electric telephones several years before Bell did.
English historian William Aitken does not share Bruce's viewpoint. Bruce indirectly referred to Meucci as "the silliest and weakest impostor",Bruce 1973, p. 278. while Aitken has gone so far as to define Meucci as the first creator of an electrical telephone.
Other recognition of Meucci's work in the past came from the International Telecommunication Union, positing that Meucci's work was one of the four precursors to Bell's telephone, as well as from the Smithsonian Institution, which listed Meucci as one of the eight most important inventors of the telephone in a 1976 exhibit.Smithsonian Institution: Person to Person – Exhibit Catalog, 100th Birthday of the Telephone, National Museum of History and Technology, December 1976.
Meucci and his business partners hired an attorney (J. D. Stetson), who filed a caveat on behalf of Meucci with the patent office. They had wanted to prepare a patent application, but the partners did not provide the $250 fee, so all that was prepared was a caveat, since the fee for that was only $20. However, the caveat did not contain a clear description of how the asserted invention would actually function. Meucci advocates claim the attorney erased margin notes Meucci had added to the document.Nese, Marco & Nicotra, Francesco. "Antonio Meucci, 1808–1889", Italy Magazine, Rome, 1989, p. 85.
Around 1873, a man named Bill Carroll from Boston, who had news about Meucci's invention, asked him to construct a telephone for divers. This device should allow divers to communicate with people on the surface. In Meucci's drawing, this device is essentially an electromagnetic telephone encapsulated to be waterproof.
On 28 December 1874, Meucci's Telettrofono patent caveat expired. Critics dispute the claim that Meucci could not afford to file for a patent or renew his caveat, as he filed for and was granted full patents in 1872, 1873, 1875, and 1876, at the cost of $35 each, as well as one additional $10 patent caveat, all totaling $150, for inventions unrelated to the telephone.Estreich Bob. Antonio Meucci: Twisting The Evidence, BobsOldPhones.net website, 25 February 2011.
After Bell secured his patents in 1876 and subsequent years, the Bell Telephone Company filed suit in court against the Globe Telephone Company (amongst many others) for patent infringement. Purportedly too poor to hire a legal team, Meucci was represented only by lawyer Joe Melli, an orphan whom Meucci treated as his own son. While American Bell Telephone Company v. Globe Telephone Company, Antonio Meucci, et al. was still proceeding, Bell also became involved with The U.S. Government v. American Bell Telephone Company, instigated by the Pan-Electric Telephone Company, which had secretly given Augustus Hill Garland the U.S. Attorney General 10% of its shares, employed him as a director, and then asked him to void Bell's patent. Had he succeeded in overturning Bell's patent, the U.S. Attorney General stood to become exceedingly rich by reason of his shares.Rockman, Howard B. "Intellectual Property Law for Engineers and Scientists." IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, Wiley-IEEE, 2004, pp. 107–109; "Augustus Hill Garland (1832–1899)", Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture website; retrieved 1 May 2009.
An important piece of evidence brought up in the trial was Meucci's Memorandum Book, which contained Meucci's noted drawings and records between 1862 and 1882. In the trial, Antonio Meucci was accused of having produced records after Bell's invention and that he backdated them. As proof, the prosecutor brought forward the fact that the Rider & Clark company was founded only in 1863. At trial, Meucci said William E. Rider himself, one of the owners, had given him a copy of the memorandum book in 1862; however, Meucci was not believed. "Antonio Meucci's Memorandum Book", Italian Society of Electrotechnics. .
On 13 January 1887, the United States Government moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. After a series of decisions and reversals, the Bell company won a decision in the Supreme Court, though a couple of the original claims from the lower court cases were left undecided. United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 128 U.S. 315 (1888), supreme.justia.com; accessed 15 June 2015. By the time that the trial wound its way through nine years of legal battles, the U.S. prosecuting attorney had died and the two Bell patents (No. 174,465 dated 7 March 1876 and No. 186,787 dated 30 January 1877) were no longer in effect, although the presiding judges agreed to continue the proceedings due to the case's importance as a stare decisis.
With a change in administration and charges of conflict of interest (on both sides) arising from the original trial, the U.S. Attorney General dropped the lawsuit on 30 November 1897 leaving several issues undecided on the merits. During a deposition filed for the 1887 trial, Meucci claimed to have created the first working model of a telephone in Italy in 1834. In 1886, in the first of three cases in which he was involved, Meucci took the stand as a witness in the hopes of establishing his invention's priority. Meucci's evidence in this case was disputed due to lack of material evidence of his inventions as his working models were reportedly lost at the laboratory of American District Telegraph (ADT) of New York. ADT did not merge with Western Union to become its subsidiary until 1901.Catania, Basilio. "Antonio Meucci – Questions and Answers: What did Meucci to bring his invention to the public?", Chezbasilio.org website; accessed 8 July 2009. History of ADT , ADT.com website; retrieved 8 July 2009.
Meucci's patent caveat had described a lover's telegraph, which transmitted sound vibrations mechanically across a taut wire, a conclusion that was also noted in various reviews ("The court further held that the caveat of Meucci did not describe any elements of an electric speaking telephone...", and "The court held that Meucci's device consisted of a mechanical telephone consisting of a mouthpiece and an earpiece connected by a wire, and that beyond this the invention of Meucci was only imagination.")Rockman, Howard B. "Intellectual Property Law for Engineers and Scientists", IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, Wiley-IEEE, 2004, pp. 107–09; .Grosvenor, Edwin S. "Memo on Misstatements of Fact in House Resolution 269 and Facts Relating to Antonio Meucci and the Invention of the Telephone", alecbell.org, 30 June 2002. Meucci's work, like many other inventors of the period, was based on earlier acoustic principles and despite evidence of earlier experiments, the final case involving Meucci was eventually dropped upon his death.Bruce 1990 reprint 1973, pp. 271–272.
In 1834, Meucci constructed a kind of acoustic telephone as a way to communicate between the stage and control room at the theatre "Teatro della Pergola" in Florence. This telephone was constructed on the model of Speaking tube on ships and is still functional.
In 1848, Meucci developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat rheumatism. He used to give his patients two conductors linked to 60 Bunsen batteries and ending with a cork. He also kept two conductors linked to the same Bunsen batteries. He used to sit in his laboratory, while the Bunsen batteries were placed in a second room and his patients in a third room. In 1849 while providing a treatment to a patient with a 114V electrical discharge, in his laboratory Meucci is claimed to have heard his patient's scream through the piece of copper wire that was between them, from the conductors he was keeping near his ear. His intuition was that the "tongue" of copper wire vibrated just like a leave of an electroscope—which meant there was an electrostatic effect. To continue the experiment without hurting his patient, Meucci covered the copper wire with a piece of paper. Through this device he claimed to hear an unarticulated human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (talking telegraph).
On the basis of this prototype, some claim Meucci worked on more than 30 kinds of telephones. In the beginning, he was inspired by the telegraph. Different from other pioneers of the telephone—such as Charles Bourseul, Philipp Reis, Innocenzo Manzetti, and others—he did not think about transmitting voice by using the principle of the telegraph key (in scientific jargon, the "make-and-break" method). Instead, he looked for a "continuous" solution, meaning one that didn't interrupt the electric flux. In 1856, Meucci reportedly constructed the first electromagnetic telephone, made of an electromagnet with a nucleus in the shape of a horseshoe bat, a diaphragm of animal skin, stiffened with potassium dichromate and a metal disk stuck in the middle. The instrument was housed in a cylindrical carton box. He purportedly constructed it to connect his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus communicate with his invalid wife.
Meucci separated the two directions of transmission to eliminate the so-called "local effect"—using what we would call today a four-wire-circuit. He constructed a simple calling system with a telegraphic manipulator that short-circuited the instrument of the calling person to make a succession of impulses (clicks) that were louder than normal conversation. Aware that his device required a bigger band than a telegraph, he found some means to avoid the so-called "skin effect" through superficial treatment of the conductor or by acting on the material (copper instead of iron).
In 1864, Meucci claimed to have made what he felt was his best device, using an iron diaphragm with optimized thickness and tightly clamped along its rim. The instrument was housed in a shaving-soap box, whose cover clamped the diaphragm. In August 1870, Meucci reportedly obtained transmission of articulate human voice at a mile distance by using as a conductor a copper wire insulated by cotton. He called his device "telettrofono". Drawings and notes by Antonio Meucci with a claimed date of 27 September 1870 show that Meucci understood inductive loading on long-distance telephone lines 30 years before any other scientists. The question of whether Bell was the true inventor of the telephone is perhaps the single most litigated fact in U.S. history, and the Bell patents were defended in some 600 cases. Meucci was a defendant in American Bell Telephone Co. v. Globe Telephone Co. and others (the court's findings, reported in 31 Fed. Rep. 729).
In his History of the Telephone, Herbert Newton Casson wrote:
Judge Wallace's ruling was bitterly regarded by historian Giovanni Schiavo as a miscarriage of justice.Catania, Basilio (April 2003). Antonio Meucci: Una vita per la scienza e per l'Italia (in Italian). Istituto Superiore delle Comunicazioni e delle Tecnologie per l'Informazione.
In 2002, some news articles reported that "the resolution said his 'telettrofono', demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who took out a patent 16 years later."Estreich, Bob. Antonio Meucci: The Resolution; retrieved from BobsOldPhones.net website, 25 February 2011.
A similar resolution was introduced to the U.S. Senate but no vote was held on the resolution.United States Senate. Senate Resolution 223, 108th Congress (2003–2004), 10 September 2003; retrieved 23 February 2020.U.S. Senate. "Submission of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions – (Senate – 10 September 2003)", U.S. Congress Thomas Website, p. S11349, 10 September 2003.GovTrack.us. S.Res.223 (108th Congress); retrieved from GovTrack.us website on 28 February 2011.
Despite the House of Representatives resolution, its interpretation as supporting Meucci's claim as the inventor of the telephone remains disputed, as the resolution only referred to "his work in the invention of" the telephone rather than a direct assertion that he was the inventor of the telephone.Estreich, Bob. Antonio Meucci: (section) The Resolution; retrieved from BobsOldPhones.net website, 25 February 2011;
The House of Commons of Canada responded ten days later by unanimously passing a parliamentary motion stating that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone. "House of Commons of Canada, Journals No. 211, 37th Parliament, 1st Session, No. 211 transcript". Hansard of the Government of Canada, 21 June 2002, p 1620/cumulative p. 13006, time mark: 1205; retrieved 29 April 2009. Fox, Jim, "Bell's Legacy Rings Out at his Homes", Globe and Mail, 17 August 2002.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica hailed the vote to recognize Meucci as a belated comeuppance for Bell.
Bankruptcy
At the same time, Meucci was led to poverty by some fraudulent debtors. On 13 November 1861 his cottage was auctioned. The purchaser allowed the Meuccis to live in the cottage without paying rent, but Meucci's private finances dwindled and he soon had to live on public funds and by depending on his friends. As mentioned in William J. Wallace's ruling, American Bell Telephone Co. v. Globe Telephone Co. (1887), via Scripophily.net. Archived 21 February 2004. during the years 1859–1861, Meucci was in close business and social relations with William E. Ryder, who invested money in Meucci's inventions and paid the expenses of his experiments. Their close working friendship continued until 1867.
Patent caveat
On 12 December 1871 Meucci set up an agreement with Angelo Zilio Grandi (Secretary of the Italian Consulate in New York), Angelo Antonio Tremeschin (entrepreneur), Sereno G.P. Breguglia Tremeschin (businessman), in order to constitute the Telettrofono Company. The constitution was notarized by Angelo Bertolino, a Notary Public of New York. Although their society funded him with $20, only $15 was needed to file for a full patent application.U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "The Story of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office". Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office. Washington:IA-SuDocs, Rev. August 1988. iv, 50p. MC 89-8590. . SL 89-95-P. S/N 003-004-00640-4. $1.75. C 21.2:P 27/3/988 – – – – Note: the 1861 filing fee is listed on Pg. 11, and the 1922 filing fee is listed on page 22.U.S.P.T.O. & Patent Model Association. , 2001; retrieved from PatentModelAssociation.com website, 25 February 2011. The patent caveat his lawyer submitted to the US Patent Office on 28 December 1871 was numbered 3335 and titled "Sound Telegraph".
The following is the text of Meucci's caveat, omitting legal details of the Petition, Oath, and Jurat:
Analysis of Meucci's caveat
Meucci repeatedly focused on insulating the electrical conductor and even insulating the people communicating, but does not explain why this would be desirable.Caveat, p. 17 top The mouth piece is like a "speaking trumpet" so that "the sound concentrated upon the wire" is communicated to the other person, but he does not say that the sound is converted to variable electrical conduction in the wire.Caveat p. 17 "Another instrument is also applied to the ears", but he does not say that variable electrical conduction in the wire is to be converted to sound. In the third claim, he claims "a sound conductor which is also an electrical conductor, as a means of communication by sound",Caveat p. 18 which is consistent with acoustic sound vibrations in the wire that get transmitted better if electrical conductors such as a wire or metallic tube are used."metallic tube" in Caveat, p. 16 bottom.
Conflicting opinions of Meucci biographers
According to Bruce, Meucci's own testimony as presented by Schiavo demonstrates that the Italian inventor "did not understand the basic principles of the telephone, either before or several years after Bell patented it."Bruce, Robert V. (1973). Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, Cornell University Press, p. 272.
Telettrofono Company
In 1872, Meucci and his friend Angelo Bertolino went to Edward B. Grant, Vice President of American District Telegraph Co. of New York (not Western Union as sometimes stated), to ask for help. Meucci asked him for permission to test his apparatus on the company's telegraph lines. He gave Grant a description of his prototype and a copy of his caveat. After waiting two years, Meucci went to Grant and asked for his documents back, but Grant allegedly told him they had been lost.
Note: according to this article: "Garland soon found himself embroiled in scandal. While Garland was in the Senate, he had become a stockholder in, and attorney for, the Pan-Electric Telephone Company, which was organized to form regional telephone companies using equipment developed by J. Harris Rogers. The equipment was similar to the Bell telephone, and that company soon brought suit for patent infringement. Soon after he became attorney general, Garland was asked to bring suit in the name of the United States to invalidate the Bell patent. He refused..."
However, in Rockman (2004), there is no mention of Garland refusing to do so, and moreover Garland had been given his shares in Pan-Electric, by the company, for free. "Augustus Hill Garland (1874–1877)", Old Statehouse Museum website; retrieved 1 May 2009.
Note: According to this biography: "He did, however, suffer scandal involving the patent for the telephone. The Attorney General's office was intervening in a lawsuit attempting to break Bell's monopoly of telephone technology, but it had come out that Garland owned stock in one of the companies that stood to benefit. This congressional investigation received public attention for nearly a year, and caused his work as attorney general to suffer."
Trial
The Havana experiments were briefly mentioned in a letter by Meucci, published by Il Commercio di Genova of 1 December 1865 and by L'Eco d'Italia of 21 October 1865 (both existing today). Meucci profile, www.chezbasilio.org; accessed 15 June 2015.
Death
Meucci became ill in March 1889, and died on 18 October 1889 in Clifton, Staten Island (at the time part of the town of Southfield), New York.
Invention of the telephone
There has been much dispute over who deserves recognition as the first inventor of the telephone, although Bell was credited with being the first to transmit articulate speech by undulatory currents of electricity. The Federazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica has devoted a museum to Meucci featuring a chronology of his inventing the telephone and tracing the history of the two trials opposing Meucci and Bell. L'invenzione del telefono da parte di Meucci e la sua sventurata e ingiusta conclusione, aei.it. . Museo Storico Virtuale dell'AEIT Sala Antonio Meucci, aei.it. . They support the claim that Antonio Meucci was the real inventor of the telephone. However, some scholars outside Italy do not recognize the claims that Meucci's device had any bearing on the development of the telephone. Author Tom Farley writes that: "Nearly every scholar agrees that Bell and Watson were the first to transmit intelligible speech by electrical means. Others transmitted a sound or a click or a buzz but our boys Bell were the first to transmit speech one could understand."
2002 U.S. Congressional resolution
In 2002, on the initiative of U.S. Representative Vito Fossella (R-NY), in cooperation with an Italian-American deputation, the U.S. House of Representatives passed United States HRes. 269 on Antonio Meucci stating "that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged." According to the preamble, "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell." House Resolution 269, dated 11 June 2002, written and sponsored by Rep. Vito Fossella.Bellis, Mary. "Antonio Meucci and the invention of the telephone" , inventors.about.com; accessed 15 June 2015. The resolution's sponsor described it as "a message that rings loud and clear recognizing the true inventor of the telephone, Antonio Meucci."
"the text of the Resolution DOES NOT acknowledge Meucci as the inventor of the telephone. It does acknowledge his early work on the telephone, but even this is open to question."Bethune, Brian. "Did Bell steal the idea for the phone?", Macleans, 23 January 2008; retrieved 30 April 2009.
Garibaldi–Meucci Museum
The Order of the Sons of Italy in America maintains a Garibaldi–Meucci Museum on Staten Island. The museum is located in a house that was built in 1840, purchased by Meucci in 1850, and rented to Giuseppe Garibaldi from 1850 to 1854. Exhibits include Meucci's models and drawing and pictures relating to his life. "The Garibaldi–Meucci Museum", StatenIslandUSA.com, Office of the Borough President.
Other inventions
This list is also taken from Basilio Catania's historical reconstruction. Basilio Catania's chronological list of Meucci's inventions, chezbasilio.org; accessed 15 June 2015. "Assessment of Meucci's Inventions by Today's Experts", chezbasilio.org; accessed 21 January 2020.
Patents
US patent images in TIFF format
See also
Further reading
Documents of the trial
Scientific and historic research
• Pizer, Russell A. The Tangled Web of Patent #174465 Pub: AuthorHouse ©2009, 347pp. Pizer's book contains 37 illustrations. Of extreme importance is research via the 1971 Ph.D. dissertation of Dr. Rosario Tosiello whose PhD advisor at Boston University was Robert V. Bruce the 1973 author of "Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solute." The '"Tangled Web of Patent #174465" shows that A. G. Bell did not ever file a patent for the telephone and the Patent #174465 did not mention the word "telephone." The patent application was submitted by Attorney Pollok at the insistence of A. G. Bell's soon-to-be father-in-law, Gradiner Green Hubbard. A. G. Bell was unaware Anthony Pollock had submitted the application at the time of its submission.
Other media
External links
US Congress Resolution 269
Museums and celebrations
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