Suchergebnisse

This article deals with the events that preceded the U.S. House Resolution No. 269 of June 11, 2002, acknowledging the primacy of Antonio Meucci in the invention of the telephone and that were decisive to the passing of the same. Among them are the author's lecture at the University of NewYork of October 10, 2000, and Resolution No. 1566 of the New York City Council urging the U.S. Congress to recognize the priority of Antonio Meucci in the invention of the telephone, which followed 2 days after. This lecture is reported here as it was newly delivered in Canada during the author's visit in April 2003.

The important trial between the U.S. government and Alexander Graham Bell began in June 1885 and ended in November 1897 with neither a winner nor a loser. The proceedings contain a large and authoritative body of evidence in the case for the priority of Antonio Meucci's invention of the telephone. They are, however, difficult to retrieve, because they were never printed and distributed and because the typewritten or handwritten papers, which are located at the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States, are to this day unorganized and scattered in various files. The author presents some of the evidence of fundamental importance to illustrate how the history of the invention of the telephone is very faulty on this point and demands, therefore, a congruent revision.

The life and work of Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant who claimed to have invented the telephone, are reviewed on the basis of sound evidence retrieved by the author in various archives. Of paramount importance toward establishing the historical truth was an affidavit retrieved among the (never-printed) acta of the suit instituted by the U.S. government to annul the two basic patents of Alexander Graham Bell on the telephone. This affidavit contains the telephone notes of Meucci's laboratory notebook, complete with drawings, translated into English. Both the notes and the drawings reveal advanced telephone techniques, such as inductive loading, antisidetone circuit, call signaling, line structure, and other contrivances that were to be adopted by the Bell Company many years after the affidavit was notarized, thus demonstrating the originality of Meucci's inventions.