Who invented the phone?

2002/06/18 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Patenteak/Asmakizunak
• Telekomunikazioak

Although at school we have always been shown to be invented by American Alexander Graham Bell (a Scottish native), the U.S. House of Representatives has stressed that true inventor was Antonio Meucci, Italian and American.

Vito Fossella, Republican representative of New York City, noted that Antonio Meucci installed in New York a basic telecommunications device between the basement of his house and his wife's room. In 1860 he presented his invention in an Italian newspaper of the same city. Eleven years later, he made a provisional application to obtain the patent and, having no money, had to suspend his claim in 1874.

Two years later, in 1876, Graham Bell, who worked in the same laboratory with Meucci, bought the patent for this device. In 1887, the US authority wanted to annul the patent that was resolved to Bell, but the process closed with Meucci's death in 1889.

However, after a century and thirteen years it has been discovered what was the true inventor of the tool that today is essential to us.