# Invention of the telephone **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 13, 2025, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525 "2025-03-13T13:03:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/1 "2025-03-13T13:03:56Z")
American mythology holds that Alexander Graham Bell was the one and only inventor of the telephone. But history is full of examples of inventions that happened in multiple places at about the same time. Was he really the first, or just the first one to make money from it? I have to think there were other people around the world or even elsewhere in the U.S. that were coming across the same ideas that he was. ---
**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/2 "2025-03-13T13:07:33Z")
Elisha Gray also invented a telephone but courts upheld Bell’s patent. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/3 "2025-03-13T13:40:32Z")
Because Gray was two hours later than Bell in filing the patent paperwork. That’s why Bell was first. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/4 "2025-03-13T13:45:04Z")
Your timing is almost perfect; Monday, March 10 was the 149th anniversary of Bell’s first phone call. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/5 "2025-03-13T14:08:58Z")
In Germany it is widely known that **[Johann Philipp Reis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis)** invented the first working telephone, years before Mr. Bell, who saw a model of his invention in Edinbourgh in 1872. Italians, OTOH, consider **[Antonio Meucci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci)** the pioneer, but he called his invention _telettrofono_ (_lit._ “telectrophone”) and when presenting his invention never mentioned electricity or electromagnetism, which rendered his invention not apt to be patented. Despite the fact that he used electromagnetism and electricity to convey sounds. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/6 "2025-03-13T14:32:01Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > American mythology holds that Alexander Graham Bell was the one and only inventor of the telephone. I don’t remember ever hearing this. Shortly after learning who Bell was and “Watson, come here. I want you!”, I learned that a bunch of people were working on the teklephone. That Bell really just put a few existing inventions together and did a little tinkering, and that (as described above) somebody else who independently invented the telephone applied for a patent _later the same day Bell did_. In seventh grade or so, our science class watched Connections. Although a British program, it also emphasized that Bell put together a few existing inventions and tinkered a little and that the invention of the telephone at that time was not some great leap only a genius could make, but something that would be inevitably discovered in a few years at most. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/7 "2025-03-13T14:36:31Z")
Bell infamously cheated. Note that up until recently, the US was “first to invent” for patents. (Most of the world and the US now are “first to file”.) While the small filing gap between Bell and Gray was not material then, it does play a role in what happened. Bell paid a clerk to let him see Gray’s patent. Bell then revised his patent to cover some of the stuff Gray was claiming. Such revisions don’t reset things, it’s as if it was in the original filing. Note that it would be up to Gray to prove that the added material wasn’t invented before him. Given the “technology” of document timestamping at the time, that wasn’t going to happen. Why so many people lionize dishonest people like Bell is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/8 "2025-03-13T14:39:17Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Why so many people lionize dishonest people like Bell is beyond me. Because history is written by the winners? ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/9 "2025-03-13T14:49:32Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > In Germany it is widely known that **[Johann Philipp Reis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis)** invented the first working telephone, years before Mr. Bell, who saw a model of his invention in Edinbourgh in 1872. And the first dispatched message by Reis was a much cooler sentence than Bell’s: “Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat” (The horse doesn’t eat cucumber salad). ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/10 "2025-03-13T14:59:32Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > emphasized that Bell put together a few existing inventions and tinkered a little This describes 99% of all inventions. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/11 "2025-03-13T15:05:59Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Why so many people lionize dishonest people like Bell is beyond me. Now I feel bad that my 6th grade history project, a video on Bell, took some artistic liberties and made Gray the villain of the piece, where his attempt to sabotage Bell actually helped the inventor! ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/12 "2025-03-13T15:09:35Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Why so many people lionize dishonest people like Bell is beyond me. Up until Steampunk became mainstream, I thought Thomas Edison was a good man. He was not. Besdes lying, stealing and all kinds of shady business practices, he paid people to go around to various county fairs and such and put on show where they electrocuted animals to prove that competitor Westinghouse use of alternating current was dangerous. He also filmed the electrocution of an elephant.as well In elementary school, we was a class of older students perform the musical The Electric Sunshine Man. The play was a glowing biograhy of Edison. It wasn’t until Bob’s Burgers had an episode where Tina does a musical play about the electrocution of the elephant that most Americans heard about the strangely forgotten War Of The Currents. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/13 "2025-03-13T15:17:42Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I thought Thomas Edison was a good man. I thought so too as a child, I read about him in my granny’s Reader’s Digest. Took me about a decade to learn better. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/14 "2025-03-13T15:24:41Z")
I thought George Washington cut down a cherry tree and copped to the charge out of superhuman honesty. Legends are created and persist for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with historical fact. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/15 "2025-03-13T15:35:43Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > > [@ftg](#): > > > > Why so many people lionize dishonest people like Bell is beyond me. > > Because history is written by the winners? This. And by far the most easiest way IRL to win is to cheat. To the point that you can almost assume that any significant winner is an even bigger cheater. The “ROI” to cheating (whether financial or whatever other measures of merit) is simply astronomical versus the ROI to dogged persistence played straight. Sports (pro, amateur, casual, or school-sponsored) provides a really crappy metaphor / mental framework for thinking about competition. Sports is the only arena where there are lots of partisan spectators watching both sides closely during every minute of action, _and_ there are (generally) impartial referees staring at everything to enforce the most minor infraction of the rules _and_ there are clear-cut rules that everyone agrees on and agrees apply to them. None of those things obtain in competition for inventions, promotions, businesses, professorships, romantic partners, etc. The old saw “All’s fair in love and war” really should be replaced with “All’s fair in _everything_. Except maybe pro sports, and often there too.” Not that I think it should be so. But it sure seems to be so. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/16 "2025-03-13T15:49:21Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I thought Thomas Edison was a good man. He was not. Besdes lying, stealing and all kinds of shady business practices, he paid people to go around to various county fairs and such and put on show where they electrocuted animals to prove that competitor Westinghouse use of alternating current was dangerous. He also filmed the electrocution of an elephant.as well He screwed Nikola Tesla in a manner very reminiscent of a certain shady businessman of the late 20th / early 21st century: **Edison:** I’ll pay you an enormous bonus if you solve this very difficult, daunting problem of mine. **Tesla:** Done! May I have my bonus, please? **Edison:** Haha, just kidding about the bonus! There’s some American humor for you! Welching on a business agreement once the other side has done their part. Classic American knee-slapper prank! > While working for Edison, Tesla was given the gargantuan task of figuring out how to fix all of the DC power plants. Just by virtue of the plants’ fragility, the task was nearly impossible - which is probably why Edison personally offered to pay Tesla $50,000 (about $1.2 million today) if he could do it. And then he did it. Edison’s response? “You don’t understand American humor.” Tesla never got his money, and Edison got his power plants fixed. > **[Energy Wars: Did Thomas Edison Steal Nikola Tesla's Inventions? — Things That...](https://ttkmeup.com/blog/2019/10/18/energy-wars-did-thomas-edison-steal-nikola-teslas-inventions)** > > And thus begins our descent into fraud and fortune, into the lives and lies of those we affectionately refer to as snake oil salesmen. This week, Olivia kicked us off with a household name - a man who is (I daresay wrongfully) synonymous with dozens... ---
**Author:** ![FrenchDunadan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frenchdunadan/32/5449_2.png) [@FrenchDunadan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FrenchDunadan)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/17 "2025-03-13T17:23:14Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Was he really the first, Mumble mumble “Charles Bourseul” mumble mumble… ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/18 "2025-03-13T17:31:26Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > Legends are created and persist for a lot of reasons . There’s one legend which I’ve always been suspicious about: the Wright Brothers inventing the airplane. Sure, they deserve the honor of being the first to fly. But the legend says “they were just bicycle mechanics, who suddenly invented an airplane, to the great shock of the entire world.” That always bugged me. Because, see, let me tell ya somethin’–I worked in a bike shop, and I’m a pretty good bicycle mechanic. But me, I would never try to build an airplane…So I always wondered how the Wright Brothers did. Well, it turns out that the legend fails to mention that the Wright brothers had a lot of help from other inventors. Specifically, they had a copy of a book published in Germany which gave very, detailed measurements of airplane wings. The German author had built and tested scale models of wings with various shapes and amounts of curvature, He tested the wing designs by using a primitive wind tunnel --he dropped each wing down a chimney. and precisely timed how long it took to fall. This gave a measurement of how much lift was being generated by the curvature of the wing. I saw the book in a museum, and was really surprised–Now I had the answer to my question. Despite all my experience as a professional bike mechanic, I guess I shouldda used a wind tunnel. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/19 "2025-03-13T18:07:24Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Well, it turns out that the legend fails to mention that the Wright brothers had a lot of help from other inventors. I am continually amazed that people do not realize that every single invention is based on a long line of earlier inventions. The Wright brothers didn’t invent the internal combustion engine, does that mean that since their airplane required an internal combustion engine their invention is discredited? No. They advanced far beyond dropping wings down a chimney - they built an actual wind tunnel and systematically studied lift vs. wing shape. Did they invent the wind tunnel? No. Was it a good wind tunnel? No - it provided useful qualitative but not accurate quantitative results. Was it an advancement on what was done before? Yes. > [@chappachula](#): > > That always bugged me. Because, see, let me tell ya somethin’–I worked in a bike shop, and I’m a pretty good bicycle mechanic. > But me, I would never try to build an airplane…So I always wondered how the Wright Brothers did. Did you design and build the bikes? > **[Wright Cycle Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Cycle_Company)** > > The bicycle business of the Wright brothers, the Wright Cycle Company (originally the Wright Cycle Exchange) successively occupied six different locations in Dayton, Ohio. Orville and Wilbur Wright began their bicycle repair, rental and sales business in 1892, while continuing to operate a print shop (they ended their local newspaper business in 1890). These shops helped them fund their aeronautical studies. > In 1896, they began manufacturing and selling bicycles of their own design, the Van Cl... ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525/20 "2025-03-13T23:20:05Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I don’t remember ever hearing this. Maybe it’s a difference of age, but when I was growing up - in the era when the Bell System was still a monopoly for most purposes, Bell was the one and only, just like Edison, and Morse for the telegraph, and to a surprising degree Henry Ford for the car, or at least the assembly line. American inventors were as sacred as the Founding Fathers. The Wrights really and truly were the first to make a controllable heavier-than-air aircraft. All the competing claims can be easily swatted away.\* They deserved the acclaim, because they worked harder, studied more, tinkered more, and out-scienced the supposed scientists of the time, like Samuel Langley. They were five years ahead of the rest of the world. \* I personally found the evidence that crushed [Gustave Whitehead’s claim](https://www.flyingcarsandfoodpills.com/gustave-s-whitehead-s-flying-car). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/invention-of-the-telephone/1015525.md?page=2)