Title: Who really invented the telephone?
Headings: Who Really Invented the Telephone?
Who Really Invented the Telephone?
Content: One of them claimed to have done wonders with an iron hoop and a  file in 1867; a second had a marvelous table with glass legs; a third swore that he had  made a telephone in 1860, but did not know what it was until he saw Bell's patent; and a  fourth told a vivid story of having heard a bullfrog croak via a telegraph wire which was  strung into a certain cellar in Racine, in 1851. This comic opera phase came to a head in the  famous Drawbaugh case, which lasted for nearly four years, and filled ten thousand pages  with its evidence. Having failed on Reis, the German, the opponents of Bell now brought  forward an American inventor named Daniel Drawbaugh, and opened up a noisy newspaper  campaign. To secure public sympathy for Drawbaugh, it was said that he had invented a  complete telephone and switchboard before 1876, but was in such "utter and abject  poverty" that he could not get himself a patent. Five hundred witnesses were  examined; and such a general turmoil was aroused that the Bell lawyers were compelled to  take the attack seriously, and to fight back with every pound of ammunition they  possessed. The fact about Drawbaugh is that he was a  mechanic in a country village near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.