Title: Who invented the telephone?
Headings: Who invented the telephone?
Who invented the telephone?
Honoring the real inventor of the phone
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Content: Who invented the telephone? Who invented the telephone? Honoring the real inventor of the phone
© Zak Keith, 2009
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If you answered “Alexander Graham Bell,” then you, along with millions of people around the world have been misinformed. I n 2001, the US Congress finally succumbed to the nagging truth and “changed its mind” on the issue, according credit to the real inventor and declaring that the original telephone was in fact invented by Antonio Meucci, a penniless Italian who did not speak a word of English and could not afford to patent his discovery. As to Alexander Graham Bell? Well, he was just a successful patent applicant and, some would say, thief. According to the US Congress, Bell was a cunning opportunist who took all the credit for a more brilliant scientist’s work. The House of Representatives voted to recognise mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as the father of modern communications, following a protracted battle by historians and Italian Americans. The real inventor of the telephone, Meucci (1808—1989), had been working in Cuba in the 1830s, developing methods for treating illnesses using electric shocks, when he discovered the ability of sound to travel through electrical impulses. He later moved to Staten Island to follow up on his discovery.