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.
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:5, Funny)
Does that mean if L. Ron hadn't invented Scientology somebody else would have? ;)
Scary thought.....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about what we know of Scientology, outside the complete storyline, everything else exists or has existed in some form throughout human history. We have had con men preying on people suffering from depression and significant events in people's lives. Scientology does this. It created some story to draw people in a sort of make believe world, Look at WoW or Star Wars or a number of other stories. It uses force to keep people inside the organization in line and
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not true.
Religion is a set of rules governing behavior of a human population. Religions are not subject to scientific testing, because you'd need to study a population of humans over several generations, with a control, and you'd be dead before the experiment was half over.
That's what makes them so much more interesting, debatable, and generally difficult to deal with than science. All you have to work with is deduction, observation of the aftermath of a bunch of experiments started by men long dead, and no control group. Yet, this problem domain is the most important there is, because it governs how we live.
Just because you like your problems neat and tidy, provable and falsifiable, that doesn't mean the world is obligated to reduce itself to your level.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even then, scientists and inventors were not that insular -- the foundations of all of these discoveries had been slowly generating through previous works. In more recent times, the communication within the scientific community makes this stan
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
in terms of history at large, i don't know that it is so easy to say that the individual does not account for the majority of the history. looking at post ww1 germany,
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: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem here is that you are putting too much value on ideas. Ideas aren't really worth that much. If anything, its the implementation of the ideas that is worth something. Ideas are a dime a dozen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for the patent system is to keep people from hiding their ideas away. The alternative to the patent system isn't free information, but severely protected, jealously guarded information. Products would be more expensive, because you'd have to safeguard the ideas that went into them by building misdirection into the product. Ideas could actually be lost, in cases where the inventor dies with his secret, which, of course, he'd be unable to share with anyone without endangering his livelihood.
I don't disagree that the patent system is completely screwed up right now, but the solution is not to throw it away. It has a purpose.
Patents don't promote disclosure (Score:5, Insightful)
And since disclosing ideas before they are patented is harmful to getting a patent, the patent system actually discourages disclosure and promotes secrecy.
Society gets the worst possible deal - monopolies in exchange for ideas that would become public knowledge anyhow, and increased secrecy in areas where collaboration is needed for innovation.
It's not a sane system. It exists because of the logic of power and money and history, not economic logic.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are many types of trade secrets. Knowing how to make something in a unique way won't necessarily come out by just looking at a product. Patents aren't just about revealing an idea, but how to actually realize it
Further not everything is easy to identify just by inspection. For example chemcial compounds are difficult to revers
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cheers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
Certainly you are right that the patent system has a lot invested in the "great man" mystique. I don't have a problem with this. What I have a problem with is that the patent system grants two orders of magnitude more patents than the number of great inventors justifies.
In general, if society determines that a precious resource is scarce, the reward is vastly amplifie
Re: (Score:2)
In one of his F&SF essays, Isaac Asimov, asserts that the expression assumes the third definition of "prove" [answers.com]: "To determine the quality of by testing; try out."
That is really the only sense in which an exception could be said to prove a rule, at any rate. Now I seem to remember the essay applying that idea to the expression:
"The barber cuts everyone in town's hair
Re: (Score:2)
I think you've misunderstood the expression [wikipedia.org]. The "proves [m-w.com]" in the expression is the (perhaps somewhat outdated) second meaning in Merriam-Websters, "to test the truth, validity, or genuineness of." The point is that the exception ought to make you rethink the general applicability of the rule.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:4, Insightful)
Contrast this with the efforts of such as Tesla, and you see an example of genius at work. Genius is about intuition. It's about having a massive jumble in your head that you assemble into a coherent system by deduction, then test afterwards.
Patents are about protecting people like Edison and those who make science a clever trick to hold over your fellow man and money off them. It's about protecting them from people like Tesla, who are idealistic and want to communicate the truths they see to be self-evident and see them exploited to the greatest degree possible, even if there's nothing in it for them.
Patents are, and have always been, economic weapons used to keep other people from knocking the King of the Castle down from his perch. They are uniformly bad for progress.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, lock a genious in a cellar for fifty years of uninterrupted invention and what do you get?
I mean, really. If you had an average genious and stuck them in a cellar in 1957 and let them out today, would they have a bunch of marvellous inventions? Or would they have a bunch of stuff that would have been marvellous inventions in 1958?
Even the best ge
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:5, Insightful)
Edison was more commercial, but again, you simply cannot use that fact to discount his contribution or the number of inventions he and his team created. The breakthrough with the lightbulb wasn't knowing how to make a lightbulb -- everyone in the field had the basic idea already -- it was findng a filament that didn't burn out after ten seconds. Edison's team tried THOUSANDS of filaments before they found one that worked. By applying brute force, Edison and his team did more good than any number of people who had great ideas but couldn't productize them.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
It took one person investing a lot of resources into it to find the working solution. The geniuses will continue to do their research, but the unglamorous part needs to be profitable or no one will want to do it.
In what way did Eddison's patents hold back Tesla? (this is a real question, I thought Tesla was very theroretical, and didn't realize that he was hampered by patents at all).
Eddison took the theroretical and made it something I could buy,
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.Re:Common Sense for Patents (Score:4, Funny)
You must be new here.
I had a few of those thoughts myself, but not all of them. Nice (and short) read.
I would add that people should be allowed to submit evidence of prior-art after patent acceptance without having to go through legal processes (violating the patent, going to court, and then *hoping* to win).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm trying to be pragmatic whilst addressing this urge - you simply cannot go up against the establishment with this sort of knee jerk. But this sentiment is what I am trying to address with my last point (e.g. - most software patents can be implemented in a few hours in mom's basement and, as such, are not patent-able under my suggested structure).
I don't know if "they" are listening, but the last time that I opined constructively [slashdot.org] on the patent system,
Re: (Score:2)
Is (for example) a software algorithm for controlling packet routing really that different than a mechanical device which controls fuel flow in an internal combustion engine? They're both just making logical decisions, even though one is more analogue than the other.
Re: (Score:2)
Well actually the router device that uses the algorithm to route the packets would be patentable, not the algorithm itself. Just like you would seek a patent on the mechanical device that controlled fuel flow, not its internal parts.
Why the di
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
# Accept all submissions that pass a basic sanity check
What exactly is a basic sanity check? Does the patent "make sense"? To who? As you can see from some of the patents out there, the patent office already accepts pretty much everything.
# Keep all submissions secret for X [days|weeks|months]
Okay, that's a nice idea, but it would be difficult to enforce. Even if you could enforce it, you would have all sorts of conspiracy claims about the patent office burying patent applications rela
Re: (Score:2)
As long as you retain the monopoly nature of the patent system it's unfixable. It's like arguing about how the Soviet state-run monopoly system could have been made to work if only comittee meetings were open and the public had an idea box.
It's not the ease or difficulty with which you can obtain a patent that causes the problem; it's the fact that it gives you the power to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing.
Fixing the patent system inevitably means you have
Re:Common Sense for Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure what this means.
Keep all submissions secret for X [days|weeks|months]
Oh, I disagree. I think that the PTO should publish all submissions immediately, regardless of whether or not they ultimately are patented. First, because government business should always be done in the open if at all possible. Second, because if an inventor tries to submit an invention and only later withdraws it (perhaps after he decides he'd rather not publish at all) then I don't see why we should honor his wishes to such an extent that he can avoid publication. Third, because rival inventors should be able to be informed about what the PTO is actually doing on a day-to-day basis.
If two submissions are received for the same "invention" within this timeframe, then disallow it as obvious
Well, that would be grossly different from what obviousness has meant in the past. Traditionally, an invention is obvious if any person having ordinary skill in the art (e.g. a generic electrical engineer) and a comprehensive knowledge of prior art and absolutely no imagination whatsoever, could reasonably have made the invention at that time.
That two people have a brilliant idea at the same time isn't obviousness, it's just coincidence.
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).
Why? And who cares? Ideas are not patentable; only inventions are. An invention might have originated from an idea, but it is far more mature. Basically, an idea is pie-in-the-sky wishing, while an invention can actually work. People dreamt of flying via machines since classical Greece, at least, but that doesn't mean that that should have meant anything when we finally figured it out.
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.
I disagree. The application process fulfills this role already. It's time-consuming to file for a patent, and often somewhat costly. This means that if an inventor doesn't himself think that the invention is economically worth the trouble, he won't bother, and the invention will just be in the public domain rapidly, if anything happens. Since you're only increasing the applicant's burden, this won't change anyway. If he feels that he can recoup the costs of getting the patent, plus make enough of a profit that it outweighs his best alternative, then he'll pursue one. You don't need to do anything here, and for God's sake, you don't want to weed out the starry-eyed inventors who have no grasp on finances. We want their inventions to be publicized, regardless of whether they're really viable.
There's a number of things that can improve the system, but not these, IMO.
Re: (Score:2)
Can't trust anyone.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to submit a device that utilizes the state of Elementary Particles, the Strong Force, the Weak Force, the Electromagnetic Force, and / or the Force of Gravity to perform tasks related to modifying the quality of life of, or providing entertainment to, human-kind.
Dan East
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed - I think that it makes the solution "less than innovative". Thanks for that feedback.
Using public submissions of "ideas" as a baseline for "obvious"? How does that work?
You simply allow people to submit applications for solutions to become "public-domain patents" without charge. The current barrier-to-entry in the patent system creates a void that facilitates friv
Re: (Score:2)
That is an excellent point that would go a long way to help fix a lot of problems with the system (though it may introduce other problems). Unfortunately, the current "democratic" system is owned by corporate personhood so this change in the patent system would not be allowed until that was disrupted.
Also, "realize a given patent" is pretty vague.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Radio was invented nearly simultaneously by Marconi and Popov in 1895 and surprise surprise it was all based on a work by German (Hertz) from a few years before that. Similarly, while Marconi invented very little (most inventions were done by Hertz, Popov and Ducretes) he gets the credit because he successfully drove it through the patent system.
Yet another his
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The patent was later given to Tesla.
I worked for the Gray Telephone and Telepgraph company in Los Angeles in the 80s. It had been renamed "Teleautograph" and made those funny "telewriter" things. They were getting out of that and selling fax machiens and over the power line email terminals when I left in 1989.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.mercury.gr/tesla/marcen.html [mercury.gr]
From other sources, it appears that Marconi directly used Tesla's inventions (patented) in his demonstration of cross Atlantic radio communication.
Other than being a good business man and furthering the use of radio, he really had very little to do with its invention.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Patents are still a useful concept (Score:2)
Even if many inventions were actually the result of several people rushing to create the same thing, doesn't the possibility of fame and fortune help to drive all of them? Patents help to create that possibility - that the inventor will get to make a fortune, rather than having his/her idea copied and dominated by people who simply have better manufacturing capacities.
Only one runner wins a race, but all the runners compete with the prize in mind. I don't think you can assume that since there are many run
The X-prizes are an example (Score:2)
I should have said this in my parent post, but the X Prizes are a good example. Would teams compete so hard to design efficient cards if there were no prize money, and if big auto companies could simply take their designs without paying for them?
We just had a story on the Automotive X Prize [xprize.org] recently. I'm excited to see what it will produce.
Re: (Score:2)
Eh, if you look at the patent system today you'd do financially better serving fries with that and playing the lottery.
"I don't think you can assume that since there are many runners, the prize isn't important."
As the prize is mainly the right to trip anyone running in the next race you're unlikely to end up with a net benefit. Instead you end up with a lot of runners injured on the track, some prize winners offering pro
Re: (Score:2)
That's not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that the concept of a patent system is good.
Look, if I were to invent a super-efficient solar cell, how would I get it manufactured? Unless I happen to be both an engineer AND a businessman, it's going to be tough to found my own company, build my own factories, etc. And even if I do, without patents, a large company could just buy my cel
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:5, Insightful)
It is both.
The phonograph is actually a prime example of the Great Man idea. No one was really working on the idea of recording sound until Edison invented the phonograph.
The incandescent light bulb, the airplane, and radio where all inventions that where well on the way.
The real answer is that sometimes it is a brilliant flash from the blue and other times it is a lot of great people working on a problem and one of them gets there first.
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:2)
In science where patents aren't part of the problem there is still the "first come - first served" problem, but in that case the secondary contributions doesn't have to be dismissed - they can actually improve parts of the first contribution with only
Re:The most interesting thing about this controver (Score:2)
I've always liked the term 'One in a Million'. Ok, so if your idea is one in a million. Think about how many others across the globe had that idea. Not to discredit great ideas or anything. But stories like this certainly give me pause as well. Give credit where credit is due certainly. But giving credit to the person who hit the patent office first and talked to the right people is a bit stupid.
I should have be
how timely (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That's interesting. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's interesting. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
-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 an
Read the patent number! (Score:5, Funny)
Gray: You stole it from me, Elisha Gray.
Bell: Read the patent number, bitch!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Antonio Meucci invented the t (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci [wikipedia.org]
Re:Antonio Meucci invented the t (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Who invented what pissing contest. (Score:2)
Similarly, Nikola
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And it is here that I should point out that Bell was Scottish (born in my own fair City of Edinburgh) which makes him European (tho' arguably not at the time!). That's the trouble with everything that's got a modicum of thought/intelligence behind it - Americans' always think that they invented everything when it's clear to all those who looked, that the Scots invented the modern world [amazon.co.uk]. Telephone, Television, Penicillin and all the rest of it.
Try peeing higher than that :p
(Now I grant you you may have b
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
There are so many victims! (Score:4, Funny)
I invented a little button that allows you to buy things by clicking a single button once [slashdot.org], but I keep getting threatened with law suits!! THIS NEEDS TO STOP! I WANT MY ROYALTIES! Damn you patent squatters!
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Everything of any significance was invented by Chairman Mao Ze Dong and also by President for Life Kim Il Sung and also by the great working people of [insert socialist dictatorship here]. In a few years, we might be able to add would-be President for Life Hugo "No, Really, I'm just like Simon Bolivar" Chavez to this list of pioneering inventor-liberators.
Grey Area (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Smacks of Conspiracy idiocy (Score:2)
The more you look at it the more people that would have been involved.
Please. How about some, oh I don't know, evidence.
Yeah, but Gray didn't invent the telephone.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
this is still news? (Score:2)
I've known about this for years, since I was a teenager.
Rubbish (Score:3, Insightful)
So Bell's patent could have been a process to transmit sound along wires. He didn't need to prove it was possible.
There's been many patents lodged that haven't been made into a product, only for someone else to implement the same idea years later.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How do you detail a process unless you know it is possible?
And if you know it is possible, why can't you prove it?
And if you can prove it, why did you not make a prototype?
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.
Re:Benazir Bhutto Successful Assassination - 27 De (Score:2)
Reis (Score:2)
This is not to insult him, Mr. Reis was a relatively undereducated man, and deserves more recognition fo
eh...who cares, the system was and is corrupt. (Score:3, Insightful)
The system needs to be reformed, any patent help by someone not actually using that patent to make available an actual product based on that patent needs to loose the patent. DONE. Going forward NO patents for anything that doesn't actually exist, and work. You have oh say 5 years from the filing of the patent to put the damn thing on the market, or it becomes invalid. If it goes off the market the patent also becomes invalid.
No more of these patent IP holding companies that come out of no place when someone works up a brilliant concept to which they can then under some insanely broad banner claim rights to the idea.
Lotsa inaccuracies (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
In the 1870s everyone and his brother was working on the "harmonic telegraph." No invention was closer or more urgently needed.
That was how he got funding for his research.
But it is not accidental that a man who had spent his life working with the deaf had become expert in the
You mean... (Score:2, Insightful)
Another example of tech over science (Score:2)
Answer: We don't know what science is anymore and think anything technological is scientific.
Example: Look at the Sci/Tech section of google news. It does not contain any science, but is entirely geek garbage tech that is mostly M$ coverage. From Google this is not surprising, but could not be further from science. This confusion between science and technology is very common and in my opinion comes from a collective preference for ente
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.
For the record... (Score:2)
That is all.
Right... (Score:2)
You've got the story wrong (Score:2)