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What You Don’t Know About Alexander Graham Bell
When there’s a great breakthrough, there’s sometimes great controversy. If you recall our InventHelp® newsletter story a few months ago about the Davy vs. Stevenson invention feud, the fame and recognition achieved by great inventions can be simply irresistible, enough so that people are willing to go to unsavory lengths.
Read more articles from the March 2008 issue of InventHelp's newsletter for inventors |
Another prime example of such a conflict involves one of the most famous inventors in history, Alexander Graham Bell. In the recently released book “The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell’s Secret”, author Seth Shulman explores one of the world’s most important inventions: the telephone. The book shakes one of the most common invention stories that we learned in school – that Bell was the telephone’s inventor. Like most great stories, this controversy involves romance, deception and the quest for glory.
During Shulman’s year tenure as a science writing fellow at MIT, he recounts “stumbling upon evidence that reveals a twisted mystery surrounding Bell’s role in the invention of the telephone.” Shulman uses the word “stumble” because sparking controversy was not his intention; in fact, he admired Bell. As part of his journalistic training, Shulman planned to write a comparison story about Bell and another famous inventor, Thomas Edison. As such, he was granted access to Bell’s original laboratory notebook – the very one used during his work on the telephone. As he explored the notebook’s contents, Shulman was intrigued by a sudden burst in creativity following a 12-day gap in content.
As Shulman delves deeper into the mystery, he uncovers a shocking story. Bell, on a trip to Washington, D.C., filed a patent application for a conceptual telephone although he had not yet built a working one. Elisha Gray visited the patent office on the same day to file a “confidential caveat,” which is a provisional patent for an invention that’s been conceived but not built. Bell, however, was granted the patent almost immediately (an event that should have drawn suspicion), and upon his return home he entered into his notebook a drawing that depicted his rival’s transmitter.
Ultimately, Bell’s patent would become one of the most profitable patents in history. Bell’s accreditation as the inventor of the telephone secured his position as the leader of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, known to a new generation as AT&T. Elisha Gray, if he is known at all, is only known as the man whose telephone patent application arrived too late to matter.
The book intertwines Shulman’s own story with those of Bell and Gray, creating unique parallels between the creative mind of an author and the innovative mind of the inventor.
Although, the effect of the book and how this discovery will affect the next generation’s perception of the telephone is yet to be seen. Will grade-school science teachers still be telling students about Alexander Graham’s legendary first successful transmission of speech over a wire (“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you”)? Or, will they be telling students that Elisha Gray is the inventor of the telephone? Over the next decades, we’ll certainly be watching to see if Shulman’s discoveries become a permanent fixture in the history book.
Like you, we at InventHelp thought we knew the answer to the question, “Who invented the telephone?” In the world of inventing, surprises are not uncommon. What is surprising is to discover that a long-term belief may not be true. If you decide to read The Telephone Gambit, we’ll trust that your inquisitive mind will enable you draw your own conclusions.
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