Antonio Meucci:

Antonio Meucci (Florence, April 13, 1808 – October 18, 1889) was an Italian inventor who developed a form of voice communication apparatus in 1857. Many credit him with the invention of the telephone; for example, the Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Art) calls him the "inventore del telefono" (inventor of the telephone).^[1] In 2002 the U. S. House of Representatives passed a bill recognizing Meucci's accomplishment and stating that "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell."^[2]^[3] The resolution's sponsor described it as "a message that rings loud and clear recognizing the true inventor of the telephone, Antonio Meucci."^[4]

Meucci set up a form of voice communication link in his Staten Island home that connected the basement with the first floor, but was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay for the patent application. He filed a patent caveat in 1871, which was forced to expire in 1874. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the electro-magnetic transmission of vocal sound by undulatory electric current.

Biography

Florence, Italy

Meucci was born in no. 44, via di Serragli in San Frediano, a borough of Florence, Italy, on April 13, 1808. He studied chemical and mechanical engineering at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and later worked at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as a stage technician, assisting Artemio Canovetti.^[5] In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro della Pergola. This telephone was constructed on the principles of pipe-telephones used on ships and is still working.^[6]

Havana, Cuba

In October 1835, Meucci and his wife left Florence, never to return. They had accepted the proposal of a Spanish theater manager, Don Francisco Martì y Torrens, and emigrated to the Americas, stopping first in Cuba, then a Spanish province, where Meucci accepted a job at what was then called the Great Tacón Theater in Havana (at the time, the greatest theater in the Americas). In Havana he constructed a system for water purification and reconstructed the Gran Teatro, which had since been almost entirely destroyed by a hurricane.^[8]

In 1848 his contract with the Governor expired. Meucci was asked by a friend's doctors to work on Franz Anton Mesmer's therapy system on patients suffering from rheumatism. In 1849 Meucci developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat illness and subsequently made an experiment developing a device through which one could hear inarticulated human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (litt. "talking telegraph").^[9] In 1850, the third renewal of his contract with Don Francisco Martì y Torrens expired. Meucci's friendship with the general Giuseppe Garibaldi made him a suspect citizen in Cuba. On the other hand, the fame reached by Samuel F. B. Morse in the United States encouraged Meucci to make his living through inventions.

Staten Island (NYC), USA

On April 13, 1850 Meucci and his wife left Havana to immigrate to the United States, settling in the Clifton area of Staten Island, New York, where he would live for the remainder of his life. In Staten Island he helped several countrymen committed to the Italian unification movement ("Risorgimento") and escaped from political persecution. He invested the substantial capital he had earned in Cuba in a tallow candle factory (the first of this kind in America) employing several Italian exiles. For two years Meucci also hosted in his cottage his friends the general Giuseppe Garibaldi and Colonel Paolo Bovi Campeggi, who arrived in New York two months after Meucci. They worked in Meucci's factory. In 1854 Meucci's wife Ester became definitively invalid because of a serious form of rheumatoid arthritis, whereas Meucci continued his experiments. He is reported to have bought material from a certain Charles Chester's shop in New York.

The first electromagnetic telephone

In 1856 Meucci reportedly constructed the first electromagnetic telephone.^[10] He constructed this as a way to connect his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus communicate with his wife. Between 1856 and 1870, Meucci developed more than 30 different kinds of telephones on the basis of this prototype. About 1858 the painter Nestore Corradi [1]made a sketch of Meucci's intuitions (this drawing is taken as the image of a stamp produced in 2003 by the Italian Postal and Telegraph Society^[11]).
In 1860 he began to look for funding and started in Italy: he asked his friend Enrico Bandelari to look for Italian capitalists willing to finance his project. However military expeditions led by the above mentioned general Garibaldi in Italy had made the political situation in that country too unstable for anybody to invest.^[12] Then Meucci decided to publish his invention in the New York Italian-language newspaper "L'Eco d'Italia".

Bankruptcy

At the same time, Meucci was led to poverty by some fraudulent debtors. On November 13, 1861 his cottage was auctioned. The purchaser allowed the Meuccis to live in the cottage without paying a rent, but Meucci's private finances dwindled so that he soon had to live on public funds and by depending on his friends.

As mentioned in William J. Wallace's ruling,^[13] during the years 1859, 1860, and 1861 Meucci was in close business and social relations with William E. Ryder, who was interested in his inventions, paid the expenses of his experiments, and invested money in Meucci’s inventions. Their intimate relations continued until 1867.

In August 1870, Meucci reportedly obtained transmission of articulated human voice at the distance of a mile by using a copper plait as a conductor, insulated by cotton. He called this device "telettrofono". While he was recovering from injuries that befell him in a boiler explosion aboard the Staten Island Ferry, Westfield, Antonio Meucci's financial and health state was so bad that his wife Ester sold his drawings and devices to a second-hand dealer to raise some money.

The caveat

On December 12, 1871 Meucci set up an agreement with Angelo Zilio Grandi (Secretary of the Italian Consulate in New York), Angelo Antonio Tremeschin (entrepreneur), Sereno G. P. Breguglia Tremeschin (businessman), in order to constitute the Telettrofono Company. The constitution was notarized by Angelo Bertolino, a Notary Public of New York. Their society funded him $20, whereas $250 was needed in order to pay for that sort of patent. Meucci then only had the money to pay for a caveat on December 28, 1871 at the U.S. Patent Office. The caveat is numbered 3335 titled "Sound Telegraph" and gives a brief description of the invention. The members of Telettrofono Company either died or left New York City.

In summer 1872 Meucci and his friend Angelo Bertolino went to Edward B. Grant, Vice President of American District Telegraph Co. of New York, to ask for help. Meucci asked him for permission to test his telephone apparatus on the company's telegraph lines. He gave Grant a description of his prototype and a copy of his caveat. Up to 1874 Meucci had only enough money to renew his caveat while looking for funding for a true patent. After waiting two years, Meucci went to Grant and asked him to be given back his documents, but Grant answered he had lost them.^[14]^[15]

(Critics dispute the claim that Meucci could not afford to file for a patent, as he filed for and was granted patents in 1872, 1873, 1875, and 1876 for inventions unrelated to the telephone. However, others suggest that Meucci may not have felt his telephone invention had much commercial value, and prioritized his focus, energy and limited budget on inventions that appeared to have more immediate financial returns. When Meucci learned that Bell filed a patent that infringed on his invention, Meucci now understoond that Bell's interest meant there was commercial value and then protested.)

About 1873 a certain Bill Carroll from Boston, who had news about Meucci's invention, asked him to construct a "telephone for scuba divers". This device should allow divers to communicate with people on the surface. In Meucci's drawing, this device is essentially an electromagnetic telephone encapsulated to be waterproof.^[16]^[17]

When Bell secured his own patent in 1876, Meucci took Bell to court in order to state his priority on the ground of patent infringement. Being too poor to hire a legal team, Meucci was defended only by lawyer Joe Melli, an orphan whom Meucci treated as a son.

While the trial "The U.S. Government Versus Alexander Graham Bell" was going on, the Bell telephone company set up another trial "The U.S. Government Versus Antonio Meucci".

The trial

Meucci's electromagnetic telephone was described in L'Eco d'Italia of New York at the beginning of 1861, though all issues of the 1861-1863 period are not available in the major libraries of the United States. They appear to have been destroyed in a fire, so that Antonio Meucci had to swear in court what he remembered he wrote in the newspaper.
Havana's experiments were briefly mentioned in a letter by Meucci, published by Il Commercio di Genova of 1 December 1865 and by L'Eco d'Italia of October 21^th 1865 (both existing today).^[18]
One of the most important pieces of evidence brought up in the trial was Antonio Meucci's "Memorandum Book". This book, produced by Rider&Clark, contained Antonio Meucci's noted drawings and records since 1862 up to 1882. In the trial, Antonio Meucci was accused of having produced records after Alexander Graham Bell's invention and back-dated them. As a proof, the prosecutor produced the fact that Rider&Clark was founded only in 1863. In the trial, Antonio Meucci said that William E. Rider himself, one of the owners, had given him a copy of the memorandum book in 1862. But he was not believed.^[19]

On 13 January 1887, the United States Government moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. After a series of decisions and reversals, the Bell company won a decision in the Supreme Court, though a couple of the original claims from the lower court cases were left undecided.^[20] ^[21] By the time that the trial wound its way through nine years of legal battles, the U.S. prosecuting attorney had died and the two Bell patents (No. 174,46 and dated 7 March 1876 and No. 186,787 dated 30 January 1877) were no longer in effect, although the presiding judges agreed to continue the proceedings due to the case's importance as a "precedent." With a change in administration and charges of conflict of interest (on both sides) arising from the original trial, the U.S. Attorney General dropped the law suit on 30 November 1897 leaving several issues undecided on the merits.^[22]

During a deposition filed for the 1887 trial, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci also claimed to have created the first working model of a telephone in Italy in 1834. In 1886, in the first of three cases in which he was involved, Meucci took the stand as a witness in the hopes of establishing his invention's priority. Meucci's evidence in this case was disputed due to lack of material evidence of his inventions as his working models were reportedly lost at the Western Union laboratory that Bell himself previously worked at. Meucci's work, like many other inventors of the period, was based on earlier acoustic principles and despite evidence of earlier experiments, the final case involving Meucci was eventually dropped upon Meucci's death.^[23]

Invention of the telephone

There exists much dispute over who deserves priority as the first inventor of the telephone, although Alexander Graham Bell was credited with being the first to transmit articulate speech by undulatory currents of electricity.

An Italian researcher in telecommunications Basilio Catania and the Italian Society of Electrotechnics "Federazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica" have devoted a Museum to Antonio Meucci making a chronology of his inventing the telephone and tracing the history of the two trials opposing Antonio Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell [2] [3]. They both support the claim that Antonio Meucci was the real inventor of the telephone^[24] However, some scholars outside of Italy do not recognize the claims that Meucci's device had any bearing on the development of the telephone. Tomas Farley also writes that, "Nearly every scholar agrees that Bell and Watson were the first to transmit intelligible speech by electrical means. Others transmitted a sound or a click or a buzz but our boys [Bell and Watson] were the first to transmit speech one could understand."^[25]

In 1834 Meucci constructed a kind of acoustic telephone as a way to communicate between the stage and control room at the theatre "Teatro della Pergola" in Florence. This telephone is constructed on the model of pipe-telephones on ships and is still working.^[26]

In 1848 Meucci developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat rheumatism. He used to give his patients two conductors linked to 60 Bunsen batteries and ending with a cork. He also kept two conductors linked to the same Bunsen batteries. He used to sit in his laboratory, while the Bunsen batteries were placed in a second room and his patients in a third room. In 1849 while providing a treatment to a patient with a 114V electrical discharge, in his laboratory Meucci heard his patient's scream through the piece of copper wire that was between them, from the conductors he was keeping near his ear. His intuition was that the "tongue" of copper wire was vibrating just like a leave of an electroscope; which means that there was an electrostatic effect. In order to continue the experiment without hurting his patient, Meucci covered the copper wire with a piece of paper. Through this device he heard inarticulated human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (lit. "talking telegraph").^[27]

On the basis of this prototype, Meucci worked on more than 30 kinds of telephone. At the beginning he got inspiration from the telegraph model. Differently from other pioneers of the telephone, such as Charles Bourseul, Philipp Reis, Innocenzo Manzetti and others, he did not think about transmitting voice by using the principle of the telegraph key (in scientific jargon, the "make-and-break" method), but he looked for a "continuous" solution, which means without interrupting the electric flux.

In 1856 Meucci constructed the first electromagnetic telephone, made of an electromagnet with a nucleus in the shape of a horseshoe bat, a diaphragm of animal skin, stiffened with potassium dichromate and keeping a metal disk stuck in the middle. The instrument was hosted in a cylindrical carton box.^[28] He constructed this as a way to connect his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus communicate with his wife who was an invalid.

Meucci separated the two directions of transmission in order to eliminate the so-called "local effect", adopting what we would call today a 4-wire-circuit. He constructed a simple calling system with a telegraphic manipulator which short-circuited the instrument of the calling person, producing in the instrument of the called person a succession of impulses (clicks), much more intense than those of normal conversation. As he was aware that his device required a bigger band than a telegraph, he found some means to avoid the so-called "skin effect" through superficial treatment of the conductor or by acting on the material (copper instead of iron). He successfully used an insulated copper plait, thus anticipating the litz wire used by Nikola Tesla in RF coils.

In 1864 Meucci realized his "best device", using an iron diaphragm with optimized thickness and tightly clamped along its rim. The instrument was housed in a shaving-soap box, whose cover clamped the diaphragm.

In August 1870, Meucci obtained transmission of articulate human voice at a mile distance by using as a conductor a copper plait insulated by cotton. He called his device "telettrofono". According to an Affidavit of lawyer Michael Lemmi drawings and notes by Antonio Meucci dated September 27, 1870 show that Meucci understood inductive loading on long distance telephone lines 30 years before any other scientists. The painting made by Nestore Corradi in 1858 mentions the sentence "Electric current from the inductor pipe".

It is claimed that about 1873 a certain Bill Carroll from Boston, who had news about Meucci's invention, asked him to construct a device to allow divers to communicate with people on the surface. In Meucci's drawing, this device appears to be an electromagnetic telephone, encapsulated to make it waterproof.

Other inventions

Meucci patents

Historical debate

The question of whether Bell was the true inventor of the telephone is perhaps the single most litigated fact in U.S. history, and the Bell patents were defended in some 600 cases. Meucci was a defendant in American Bell Telephone Co. v. Globe Telephone Co. and others (the court’s findings, reported in 31 Fed. Rep. 729).

N. Herbert in his History of the Telephone says: "To bait the Bell Company became almost a national sport. Any sort of claimant, with any sort of wild tale of prior invention, could find a speculator to support him. On they came, a motley array, `some in rags, some on nags, and some in velvet gowns.' 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.^[30]

However, an Italian researcher in telecommunications Basilio Catania provided evidence that Alexander Graham Bell was condemned for fraud and misrepresentation in 1887^[31] . Catania recounted that Meucci gave his prototypes to Edward B. Grant, Vice President of the American District Telegraph Co. of New York .^[32]. Grant reportedly said he had lost the prototypes.

William J. Wallace’s ruling was regarded by historian Giovanni Schiavo as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the history of the U.S., and one of the most offensive, too.^[33]

On the initiative of the Italian American deputate Vito Fossella, with the Resolution 269 the U.S. House of Representatives directly contradicts findings of courts in New York, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Ohio, Maryland, and numerous others states. (See among others American Bell Telephone Co. v. Dolbear, 15 Fed. Rep. 448; American Bell Telephone Co. v. Spencer, 8 Fed. Rep. 509, and American Bell Telephone Co. v. Molecular Telephone, 32 Fed. Rep. 214.). Resolution 269 clearly makes innuendo about Alexander Graham Bell's morality.The United States House of Representatives recognized that legally, "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell" (Mary Bellis).

The House of Representatives Resolution 269

On the initiative of congressman Vito Fossella, with the Resolution 269 the U.S. House of Representatives recognised as stated, "Expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged."

H. Res. 269
In the House of Representatives, U.S.,
June 11, 2002.
Whereas Antonio Meucci, the great Italian inventor, had a career that was both extraordinary and tragic;
Whereas, upon immigrating to New York, Meucci continued to work with ceaseless vigor on a project he had begun in Havana, Cuba, an invention he later called the `teletrofono', involving electronic communications;
Whereas Meucci set up a rudimentary communications link in his Staten Island home that connected the basement with the first floor, and later, when his wife began to suffer from crippling arthritis, he created a permanent link between his lab and his wife's second floor bedroom;
Whereas, having exhausted most of his life's savings in pursuing his work, Meucci was unable to commercialize his invention, though he demonstrated his invention in 1860 and had a description of it published in New York's Italian language newspaper;
Whereas Meucci never learned English well enough to navigate the complex American business community;
Whereas Meucci was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay his way through the patent application process, and thus had to settle for a caveat, a one year renewable notice of an impending patent, which was first filed on December 28, 1871;
Whereas Meucci later learned that the Western Union affiliate laboratory reportedly lost his working models, and Meucci, who at this point was living on public assistance, was unable to renew the caveat after 1874;
Whereas in March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, who conducted experiments in the same laboratory where Meucci's materials had been stored, was granted a patent and was thereafter credited with inventing the telephone;
Whereas on January 13, 1887, the Government of the United States moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation, a case that the Supreme Court found viable and remanded for trial;
Whereas Meucci died in October 1889, the Bell patent expired in January 1893, and the case was discontinued as moot without ever reaching the underlying issue of the true inventor of the telephone entitled to the patent; and
Whereas if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged.
Attest:
Clerk.^[34]

Garibaldi-Meucci Museum

The Order of the Sons of Italy in America maintains a Garibaldi-Meucci Museum on Staten Island. The museum is located in a house that was built in 1840, purchased by Meucci in 1850, and rented to Giuseppe Garibaldi from 1850 to 1854. Exhibits include Meucci’s models and drawing and pictures relating to his life.^[35]^[36]

Meucci in popular culture

In the 1990 motion picture The Godfather Part III, the character Joey Zaza mentions Meucci as the inventor of the telephone. Meucci's name was also on the license plate of the Cadillac Zaza was auctioning off.

In the television series The Sopranos, the character Tony Soprano also mentions Meucci as the inventor of the telephone, stating "he was robbed" of being given proper credit. (Season 1, Episode 8: "The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti")

In May 16, 1996 Umberto Silvestri, President of Telecom Italia, and Guido Clemente, Florence spokesman for the Arts, put a memorial tablet on Meucci's birthplace, Via dei Serragli 44, Florence, with the text: "Qui nacque il 13 aprile 1808 Antonio Meucci, Inventore del Telefono". At the same time a memorial tablet is placed in Gran Teatro in Havana where Meucci had his laboratory with the text: "Antonio Meucci expatriado italiano en la Habana entre los años 1835 y 1850 aquí en el teatro Tacón realizó aquellos experimentos de tranmisión acústica que lo llevaron a la invención del teléfono. La ciudad natal de Florencia y la ciudad hospitalaria de la Habana en su memoria"^[37]

In 2003 the Italian Communication Ministry and the Italian Postal and Telegraph Society produced a 0,52€ stamp portraying Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.

A 2005 TV series produced by the Italian National Broadcasting Network, depicts Mr. Edward B. Grant as cheating Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell as obtaining success by more or less illegal means.^[38]^[39]

Antonio Meucci

Contents