If you ask someone who invented the telephone, most people (those who think they know) will say Graham Bell, because that’s how he goes down in the history books. However, sometimes things are not what they seem and there are times when the glory goes to those who do not deserve it, as in this case. If you want to know who he is true inventor of the telephonekeep reading.
Antonio Meucci, the true inventor of the telephone
Antonio Meucci born in florence in 1808 and after completing his studies, he emigrated to Cuba in the 1830s in order to work with rheumatic patients.
In order to reduce the pain of his patients, Meucci He applied small discharges of electricity to them, thus being the means by which he discovered the transmission of sounds through electrical impulses.
Fascinated with his discovery, Antonio Meucci traveled to the United States in order to materialize this idea, creating a sound transmitting device, what we know today as telephone. In 1871, after having carried out numerous tests and perfecting his invention, he named this device telephone. Afterwards, he applied for the patenting of it, but due to lack of money, he could not get the legal rights.
So he looked for support from companies like Western Union, but they didn’t listen to him. It was like that in 1876 Bell patent the telephoneheading immediately Meucci before the courts to claim their rights, but as expected, it was also unsuccessful. A few years later, in 1889 Antonio Meucci He dies in complete misery and under the shadow of anonymity.
More than a century must have passed so that, after numerous investigations, in 2002 it was officially recognized Antonio Meucci as the true inventor of telephone. Today, the house where the inventor was born and spent the first years of his life can be visited on Via Pellicceria in Florence.
Antonio Meucci vs. Graham Bell
The truth is that Graham Bell is the one who has really gone down in history as the inventor of the telephone, although today we already know the truth. But, already at the time, Meucci began an arduous legal confrontation against Bell, a fight that only ended after his death, completely ruined and worn out by this litigation.
And it is that life is full of “geniuses” who reach glory without deserving it by taking advantage of the talent of others, who generally lead an unhappy existence. Antonio Meucci was one of those poor miserable geniuses looted by someone with more money and less scruples.
Meucci presented his telephone in society in 1860, when he managed to reproduce the voice of a singer from meters away. However, the refusal of the companies to finance him forced him to subsist by selling other small patents. Finally, a family disaster (fire) forces his wife to sell the rest of the patents. You never know who they were sold to, although Graham Bell is said to have bought them.
Meucci works busily on rebuild your invention, but he doesn’t have enough money for the patent. He tries again to sell the invention to the Western Union, but gets no response. After more than two years of back and forth, they tell him that the patent has been lost.
Shortly after, Graham Bell files patent for the telephone, clearly inspired by Meucci’s invention. The Italian inventor quickly takes legal action, but his economic capacity has nothing to do with the lawyers of the Bell company.
Meucci’s own lawyers seem to go against him, for example by ignoring his claims requests. Certain indications indicate that Meucci’s own lawyers could “betray” him throughout the process, paid by Bell himself.
In any case, throughout the years that the litigation lasted (until Meuzzi’s death in 1889), the evidence of prevarication between Bell and the Western Union company (it was discovered that Bell had agreed to pay the company 20% of the profits generated by the telephone), as well as the true identity of the inventor of the telephone: Antonio Meucci.
However, Bell’s attorneys managed to slow down and confuse the process in such a way that it kept dragging on and on. Years later, with Bell’s death, no one asked again for the inventor of the telephone, and Graham Bell began to appear in the history books as the creator of a fundamental advance in the development of telecommunications.
Other inventions of Antonio Meucci
In addition to trying his luck in the field of telecommunications with the telephone, of which he is the true inventor, Antonio Meucci was a person with many concerns who carried out studies, experiments and inventions in numerous fields.
Some of his other most outstanding inventions were a new galvanizing system or an innovative system of filters to purify water. He was also a pioneer in the use of paraffin for the manufacture of candles and developed a system by which they were applied to patients. therapeutic electroshocks.
As we can see, Antonio Meucci has gone down in history, unfortunately, as the man from whom Graham Bell stole the telephone patent, and it was not until 2002 that it was recognized that he was the true inventor. Despite this, it should be noted that Antonio Meucci was highly respected in Italy, and also for the Italian community residing in the United States, where Antonio Meucci moved in 1835 (he would never return to Italy again). There, in the United States, he was well liked by his compatriots, among other reasons, for having launched a candle factory that gave employment to numerous workers and for helping those in need whenever it was in his power.
Perhaps what Antonio Meucci lacked was luck and the little heart that those who seize the ideas of others have. Fortunately, he lived in a fairly comfortable way for an inventor who had his best invention stolen, but surely he would like to know that, almost 200 years later, he has been recognized as the true inventor of the telephone and that even the pneumatic telephone that he invented is still in use at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence.
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