Can barnacles fly? And who really invented the telephone?

8/9/2011 6:14 PM EDT

Every engineer knows about the controversy between Newton and Leibniz over the invention of calculus, but I had never before heard of this controversy over the invention of the telephone.

This sounds like a book I need to add to my summer reading list.

8/9/2011 6:38 PM EDT

This controversy has been well known in Italy for a lot longer than I've been alive. Wikipedia has a good summary of the history, which includes Meucci and Bell, but also other early experimenters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_telephone

8/9/2011 11:41 PM EDT

Does the book mention about the controversy about the original inventor to radio? Though it is known that Guglielmo Marconi (Italy) was the inventor of wireless but it is argued by many that the oriiginal inventor was Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (India). :)

http://web.mit.edu/varun_ag/www/bose_real_inventor.pdf

8/10/2011 10:45 AM EDT

I think everyone knows about controversy of these inventions. The real question here is? Do you think that this generation of students really cares? Just correct these items in the history textbooks and move on.

8/10/2011 7:17 PM EDT

I have to agree, in the end it doesn't really matter that it was Meucci and not Bell. Heck, it was so long ago.. More interestingly,did you know that chicken tikki marsala comes from Glasgow, not India, and that bagpipes aren't Scottish they're.. och, ye should read the bloomin' book. It's just plain fun weekend reading.

8/11/2011 6:52 AM EDT

I agree that such late discoveries do not make much sense or impact on the general public other than a moment of entertainment. The people who claimed that they were the inventors of a certain thing have already enjoyed their share of glory and the real inventors may have suffered in silence . But after so many centuries these things cannot be reversed. These famous names now only form the part of those GK quizzes and nothing more.

8/11/2011 12:24 PM EDT

I've known about the telephone invention controversy for quite some time. There's a similar question about the invention of television, the light bulb, modern steel smelting and a host of other inventions. In some cases, it seems that two individuals in different parts of the world discovered the same thing independently and almost simultaneously.

This is likely a reflection of the fact that very few inventions are truly new. Most are the culmination of the works of many, many people. Most of those shoulders that inventors stand on are lost to history. Sometimes one of the "simultaneous inventors" had access to the ideas of the other. In many cases, the person written into history is the one that had the best public relations engine.

An interesting but probably unanswerable question would be to see: "how many unknown inventions have been completely lost to history because the particular inventor didn't know how to publicize the idea."

8/11/2011 3:49 PM EDT

I agree with Duane: few new inventions are truly new. If you believe in anything then you have to believe that the inspiration to create is all around us located in a large cosmic dome of ideas. Channeling those ideas into inventions is what defines inventors. Whether it is the telephone or some music composition--the idea for both came from the same source and is just an extension of the human creative process. There must have been many inventors working on the concept of telephony at the same time around the world. One or two have their name recorded for posterity; how many others could have, no one really knows. It's not what we know from the past that defines us, it's how we shape the future that extends us. But being it is summer, the "The Book of General Ignorance" should be a good read.

8/12/2011 1:15 PM EDT

Ah, what what would have happened if the first inventor have patented the rolling logs? Would we have arrived to the wheel? Or would we be rolling over logs and paying royalties? i.e. is the actual patent system helping development or stopping it?
My opinion: it is cumbersome, and it only defends the bigger fishes. They block a way, or technology, to solve a problem, and even if you came out with a improvement, you will have to go to court to defend your idea, sell your house to pay the layers, and ultimately lose because the opponent is big company residing in the Unites States. As a result, Apple, IBM and a couple more owns most of the possible ways to solve a problem, and they block all the avenues.
Bravo to the open source guys, who have found a way out of the system. Proof is the excellent Ubuntu, best OS here/now.

8/13/2011 10:35 AM EDT

Mythology comes in all forms (culture, national, corporate). My favorite is corporate mythology (e.g. many of Thomas Edison's inventions that were really made by one of his employees or the mythology regarding Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I have seen this in action on multiple occasions in small companies and large (e.g. when a new CEO takes over and begins to de-emphasize the original inventor/founder and begins to "play up" his/her role). It is amazing how blatant it can be in some circumstances. These days, I take all corporate mythology for just what it is... myth that fills some need to communicate direction, mission, or ego.

8/13/2011 4:40 PM EDT

.

8/15/2011 9:39 PM EDT

My understanding (from the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell) is that Meucci's early demonstrations used the string-and-cup method to transmit sound that we all played with as kids.

Meucci submitted a patent moments after Bell, but his patent was determined to be unworkable and he submitted no working model, so it was rejected. It is only -after- seeing Bell's patent that Meucci's attorney tried to claim that Meucci really meant to include all the same concepts in his patent.

In my mind, the modern myth is that Meucci had any kind of workable telephone before seeing Bell's patent.

8/22/2011 12:11 PM EDT

What about Elisha Gray? IIRC, he patented the telephone within hours of Bell.

8/29/2011 2:55 AM EDT

Stupid Patent Office Syndrome. If multiple people invent the same thing at about the same time one would believe that the "invention" is a reasonable "extension of prior art" and cannot be patented.