Cornered!
Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.
Follow the Australian Telecommunications scene NEWSLETTER- FREE TRIAL

Blog

Technology news and Jobs arrow Cornered! arrow Alexander Graham Bell found guilty of plagiarism after 130 years
Alexander Graham Bell found guilty of plagiarism after 130 years E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Monday, 07 January 2008
A new book on the history of the telephone is being lauded for revealing the "shocking truth" that Alexander Graham Bell plagiarised a key component of his invention from rival Elisha Gray. The book's author may have uncovered the vital damning evidence that eluded Bell's accusers over a hundred years ago, but there is little shocking in the allegations which were thoroughly aired and repeatedly tested in court several times in the late 19th century.
The controversy started on 14 February 1876 when Bell's friend Gardiner Hubbard filed - at the US patent office in Washington DC - US patent number 174,465 titled "Improvements To Telegraphy" (no mention of telephony!). A few hours later that same day a rival inventor, Elisha Gray filed in the same patent office a 'caveat' or warning to other inventors for a speaking telephone.

A crucial component of the patent application was a means of converting sound waves to electricity by causing the sound pressure to vary the resistance of an electrical conductor (a method still used today in carbon microphones).

Details of this were written into the margin of the application almost as an afterthought. Accusations flew thick and fast that Bell had been, illegally, given access to Gray's caveat, which included details of the technique and had amended his patent after submission.

According to the AT&T sponsored history. "Telephony The First Hundred Years" written by John Brooks and published in 1975, the patent "became the subject of thousands of pages of testimony in hundreds of suits to annul it, all unsuccessful...and it would be called, with few challengers, the most valuable patent ever issued."

A decade after the initial round of legal challenges to the patent had all failed Zenas F Wilbur, the patent examiner who had handled both Bell's and Gray's filings testified to a Congressional Enquiry that he had illegally notified Bell's attorneys when he had discovered a conflict between the two filings.

 
< Next story in category   Previous story in the category >
iTWire user statistics Visitors last 30 days
694,279
Subscribers 15,210
#1 independent technology news advertise here
  •   *  
  • Search
  • AdvSeach
  • Login
  • Events
  • FreeStuff

- Advertisement -

Featured Whitepapers

Cornered! - Telecoms blog
Cornered! is a blog on all things tele-communication from the perspective of one who has observed, analysed commented and reported on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition).
Follow iTWire on Twitter

About iTWire

iTWire is all about technology news, information, jobs and community for the IT and telecommunications industry professional. Subscribe to our free ICT daily newsletter