- Thursday, 12 November 2009
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I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible - Oscar Wilde
Bell nicked telephone idea
SCOTTISH inventor Alexander Graham Bell stole the technology for his telephone from rival Elisha Gray, a new book has revealed.
The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret claimed that Bell hired some aggressive lawyers and bribed a corrupt examiner to get a look at the patent documents that Gray filed first.
Hack Seth Shulman said that Bell's lab notebook shows that he was having a devil of a time transmitting sound down a wire. However in 1876 he went to Washington to sort out patent questions about his work. Mysteriously he came back with a new idea which actually worked.
Shulman claims that Bell's big idea was based on a diagram that was very similar to one in Gray's patent application.
The idea answers a few questions that historians have had about Bell's invention. The design appears hastily written in the margin of his patent. Bell was terrified about demonstrating his device with Gray present and resisted testifying in an 1878 lawsuit probing this question. Bell also distanced himself from the telephone monopoly bearing his name.
Bell's main claim to fame is that his phone transmited speech. Gray wanted to use his to send multiple messages simultaneously over the same telegraph wire. Bell could not do that.
Ironically Bell beating Gray to the patent office with his idea has made him the poster boy of the patent system. There were advertisements everywhere at one point stressing that people were only famous when they got their patents in first. Now it appears that Bell didn't but instead bribed a patent official to say he saw his first. Something you don't see on the advertisements.
More http://news.smh.com.au/book-argues-that-bell-stole-phone-idea/20071227-1j2n.html . ยต
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Antonio Meucci seems to be related enough to telephone invention that the house of representatives issued the resolution 269 especially in that sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci#The_House_of_Representatives_Resolution_269
He actually stole if from an Italian Man Called Meucci, as the American patent office has admitted. They granted Bell the patent originally for nationalistic reasons.
It's all very good and moral to teach children that crime does not pay. I am sure Mr Bell told his children something along those lines, or was told by his parents.

Ironically, crime does occasionally pay. How unfortunate that the truth was uncovered much too late.

How many more such untold stories are out there? some happening this very moment...

This seems like a lot of hooey. Gray wasn't even working on the concept of voice over the line. If Gray's work was what everything was based on, we'd all be learning morse code in kindergarten now.
Also, the book doesn't "reveal" anything. It proposes, it insinuates, it alleges. Please pull your thesaurus out of your... bookshelf.
The corruptibility of the patent office, at the turn of the previous century, must have been well known to at least one other inventor.

Edison was a basket case when it came to guarding his ideas. He actually had the right idea: if you don't want anybody to know about it, keep it secret, from everyone.

Sure, he was a nut, but look at all the inventions credited to him. He may have stolen a few inventions, himself, but could anyone claim, in 1899, that "I stole this idea from Thomas Edison?"

I thought not.
On to better news...wow, Phenom sucks!
thats really old news, we all there has been abuse of the patent system ever since it was started
For a similar controversy, see Samuel Morse nicking the best telegraph design and an alphabet code from his business partner Alfred Vail.
This isn't new News. Any IT perp knew Bell was a very naughty boy.

But will History be rewritten? I doubt it.
This is not a revelation. It has been known about for some time and was described in some detail in a television documentary released several years ago.