Title: Who invented the telephone? - Answers
Headings: Who invented the telephone
?

Who invented the telephone?
Your Answer
Who invented the telephone?

Content: A young black man, Lewis Lattimer, was employed as a draftsman by the patent law firm that Alexander Graham Bell used, and contributed to Bell's patent drawings. Lattimer become a successful inventor in his own right. As with many other important technological devices, several people often worked on and independently created the same, or similar devices in the same general time period -an example being the modern navigational quadrant or sextant. While Bell was the first to receive a patent for the telephone, several others preceded his research and credit for inventing the electric telephone remains in dispute. Despite the claims of those defending Alexander Graham Bell, its been suggested that both Antonio Meucci and then Elisha Gray successfully invented telephones in the United States before Alexander Graham Bell did in 1876. Some of the others who performed pioneering experimental work with electrical voice transmissions over wires included Thomas Edison, Innocenzo Manzetti, Charles Bourseul and Johann Philipp Reis. Ironically in 2001 the United States Congress passed a 'resolution' stating that given all the facts of the patent disputes between Gray and Bell, under no terms could Alexander Graham Bell have been awarded the patent for the telephone by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1876. However that Congressional resolution by itself served only as a declaration, and did not annul or modify the patent Bell received in 1876. The 2001 resolution was also subsequently followed by another legislative declaration upholding Bell's priority and his status as inventor of the telephone. The person who first successfully 'patented' the telephone was indisputably Alexander Graham Bell, however given what we currently know, earlier inventors of 'telephone-like' devices may have been Meucci or even others before him.