Alexander Graham Bell - Patent Thief? 280
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."
The most interesting thing about this controversy (Score:5, Interesting)
In the history profession, we used to have an idea called "Great Men" [wikipedia.org] (the idea that great, unique individuals make history). But in recent decades, this idea has fallen out of favor in the history field, in favor of the idea that mass movements and attitude shifts within the larger society "make" the history (the so-called "Zeitgeist" [wikipedia.org] idea). Traditionally, inventions like the phone, radio, etc. have been attributed to a unique individual genius. Yet, the more we learn, we see that theses inventions seemed almost "in the air" of the times, with any number of people developing them independently of one another. It seems that if Edison hadn't "invented" the phonograph, someone else would have (and someone else probably did, or was at least working on it at the same time).
I used to be a big proponent of "Great Men" history myself, but stuff like this gives me pause.
Antonio Meucci invented the t (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci [wikipedia.org]
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the big old myths is the "inventor" and "invention" myths. In fact, innovation is well understood (since the mid-1800's at least) to be a social effect, driven by market demand for new products and enabled by technological progress. Produce a new material in cheap enough quantities, and dozens of "inventors" will come up with similar new applications for it.
Of course there cases of lone inventors who work outside the rest of society - these are so rare they prove the general case that invention is the result of a social network. And this social network, which may be less obvious in some industries, is absolutely central to the innovation process in software, which is why the concept of software patents is to utterly bogus and corrupt.
Patents of all kinds are just a form of protectionist economics, along with trade barriers, subsidies, legislated monopolies, and so on. These work for those who can work the system, everyone else pays the cost.
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:3, Interesting)
Common Sense for Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
The system is essentially a "finders-keepers" deal, as it sits.
If you want to fix the patent system, then you will reconstruct it roughly as follows:
- Accept all submissions that pass a basic sanity check
- Keep all submissions secret for X [days|weeks|months]
- If two submissions are received for the same "invention" within this timeframe, then disallow it as obvious
- To help facilitate a baseline for obvious, allow the general public to submit their obvious ideas at no charge (no need to check this overwhelming amount of info - but keep it handy for posterity).
- Require patent applicants to outline the level of investment necessary to realize a given patent - the system was designed to protect the investments of entrepreneurs so, if little to no investment is required, then there is no need for a patent on a given idea. Also, patent suit awards could be derived from this information accordingly.
Just some common sense, people.I now have more respect for Bell (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out the Wright Brother's patent story for how the pursuit of patents and copyrights is the ruin of more than more inventor.
http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Sky-Hammond-Curtiss-Airplane/dp/0060956151/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198767099&sr=8-2 [amazon.com]
From the review at Amazon:
"The first flyers were so secretive and desperate to cash in on their invention that their behavior actually "retarded" the development of aviation."
The Wright Brothers felt they had "invented flight". They were trying to interpret their patents as broadly as possible. Eventually, WW I forced the US Government to force the Wrights to share the patents with other companies. The Wright brothers did not come to a happy end. That part of the story is never told in elementary school history.
Patents and copyrights are broken. They've always been broken, and I suspect they will be broken to a certain extent. They just happen to be extraordinarily broken at the moment.
More sad Liberal propaganda (Score:1, Interesting)
It's all in the accumulation of knowledge (Score:2, Interesting)
Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Isaac_Newton/ [quotationspage.com]
Not as nice as it sounds... (Score:4, Interesting)
The two men had a very acrimonious relationship, and Hooke had accused Newton of "borrowing" ideas from him in the past. Hooke was a short man, and Newton's quote was basically saying "I have indeed made use of the discoveries of great men, but you are not one of those men". The implication is that Hooke was a midget in scientific terms, as well as in physical stature.
Simon.
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, no. There is always a relationship somewhere. All technologies these days (and for the past decades, or maybe centuries) is based on something previously in existence, be it a technology, ideas, concepts etc.
Also, you are correct the lack in technology is a great factor. Most creations are made to solve a given problem already in existence. You can see it on the F/OSS movement: scratching your own itch, I think they call it.
The problem is there are always too many things to consider, so a correct historical analyzes is usually not possible. Historical researchers can only do so much.
Um, No. (Score:4, Interesting)
Meucci had a voice link from his workshop to his mother year's before Bell's "patent". He'd been suing Bell for years when he ran out of money/died. It's pretty well established that Bell stole his patents. I think If you read the page linked to in the relevant foot note [about.com], you will see it's not as cut and dried as you selectively quoted. And who is Tomas Farley anyway? I can't see anything in Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] quoting him as an expert on anything.
What we do know is that Meucci's sample hardware submitted to the Patent Office was "mislaid", and that one of Bell's close business associates worked at the Patent Office. Coincidence maybe, but worth investigating deeper than pulling a random quote from Wikipedia by an unknown source.
Close only counts in horseshoes (Score:5, Interesting)
The Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro was in attendance. Dom Pedro was an acquaintance of Bell, meeting him at the Boston School for the Deaf.
Apparently the judges were going to ignore Bell and his telephone. But Dom Pedro attracted their attention by going to the exhibit and greeting Bell. Bell gave Dom Pedro the receiver. As Dom Pedro listened to Bell recite Hamlet, Dom Pedro heard every word and exclaimed "My God, it talks!" The papers covered this historic event and the telephone was launched.
How disenchanting for Elisha Gray. He was at Dom Pedro's side at the Centennial Exposition.
On this same day of Bell's demonstration to Dom Pedro, June 25, General George Custer met his unfortunate death in the hills of Little Big Horn, Montana. Alexander Graham Bell [telephonymuseum.com]
So there you have it.
Bell was reading Hamlet from the the main building one hundred yards away,
If Elisha Gray has a telephone ready for public demonstration in the spring of 76 why is he standing on the sidelines when Bell strikes gold at America's first World's Fair?
In June of 1877 the future AT&T is not only a viable commercial enterprise but a clear threat to Western Union. If Gray hasn't spent the year sleeping at the switch why doesn't he have a marketable product to compete with Bell?
To the Wrights, the central problem of flight was control in three dimensions, an insight that evolved naturally from their work with bicycles, and eluded others like Langley with far greater resources. Elisha Gray was an electrical engineer. Bell an expert in speech and hearing. Bell needed a technician to construct his apparatus.
But there is no question that he was headed in the right direction and moving very quickly near the end.
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:3, Interesting)
There is little doubt that since "necessity is the mother of invention" several individuals would be working independently to solve the same problem. The "social effect" can be little more than trying to fill a need (or more aptly trying to satisfy demand). If there is demand for a solution, then naturally you would have more than one person looking to meet that demand (and possibly earn a living doing it).
In addition, as the technical aptitude of the populace increases the likelihood that someone would build "a better mousetrap" increases. Taking this into consideration, these social effects could be simply what you would expect statistically given a large enough population.
So the real question becomes, does the likelihood of multiple individuals creating a similar solution to solve a particular problem diminishes the justification of the patent system? No. It simply rewards the first one who created a working solution.
The next question becomes, does the patent system improve society since it rewards the innovator with a temporary monopoly in exchange for disclosing the method to how the problem was solved? Yes. Before the patent system, there were secret societies and guilds that kept their monopoly by keeping their methods secret and exerting political pressure within a township. We have the technological savvy today because others are able to learn from these disclosures.
So why is the patent system being attacked? Well on one side you have an overworked and poorly equipped staff of the patent office that must deal with applications written by lawyers that have mastered the art of bullshit. On the other side, you have a generational shift from the "That idea was so simple, I'm surprised that I didn't think of it first" to the "That idea was so simple, it is blatantly obvious and I could have gotten a patent on it earlier if I wanted to." Of course this is a gross simplification of the generational shift, but it does accurately portray the attitude of most of the comments posted here on slashdot.
Is the patent system perfect? Hell no.
The controversy over the patent system has more to do with patentability of software than the existence of the system. So does software algorithms deserve patent protection? No. Does a method of performing something tangible that may include a software component deserve a patent? Maybe. I leave it to the reader to look at the many slashdot discussions that have been made in the past...
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:4, Interesting)
See, I would say that being a good businessman and screwing other people makes you intrinsically evil, while refusing to screw people when you can, but instead sharing freely with them makes you intrinsically good.
Evil is a precursor to success in business.
-been going on since colonial times (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I remember from US history:
One of the main beefs between Britain and the US shortly after the Revolutionary war (besides impressment of US seamen) was that in order to industrialize quickly the US chose to ignore most if not all British patents and copyrights.
And in fact, pre-Revolution america had been denied many manufacturing technologies such as textiles because Britain wanted to be able to make money off of us from their imported goods and didn't want local competition.
Stealing of ideas and copyrighted materials lasted to some degree through most of the 19th century -I remember reading that Charles Dickens came to the US to unsuccessfully sue for royalties on some of his work that had been published in the US without giving him any compensation.
On the other hand, I think that Britain also ignored US copyright in this case since I recall both Ben Franklin and Samuel Clemens complaining about their works being pirated abroad.
I'm just sayin'