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“The Telephone Gambit” Casts Shadows on Legacy of Alexander Graham Bell

A forthcoming book claims to have the most definitive evidence yet supporting the theory that Alexander Graham Bell stole fundamental ideas for the telephone from rival inventor, Elisha Gray.

In The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell’s Secret, journalist, Seth Shulman argues that Bell – with the help of aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner – improperly accessed patent documents that Gray had filed, then falsely claimed credit for the invention. Shulman believes that Bell’s own lab notebook, which wasn’t widely available until 1999, supports his conclusion.

The notebook details numerous false starts and frustrations experienced by Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, as they tried to transmit sound electromagnetically over a wire. Then in 1876, after traveling to Washington to sort out patent issues, Bell suddenly began experimenting with a new kind of voice transmitter, which ultimately proved successful.

The new approach was remarkably similar to a diagram in Gray’s patent filings, which many suspect was the true inspiration of the first working telephone.

Shulman’s book, recounts this and other details that have aroused the researchers’ suspicions. It goes over a variety of circumstantial, yet eyebrow-raising evidence, including the fact that Bell’s diagrams appear to be hastily written in the margins of his patent application, and that he avoided demonstrating his invention with Gray present.

Shulman also looks at the reasons why historical memory has favored Bell over Gray and other inventors who contributed at least as much to the telephone’s development, suggesting that Bell’s skillful public demonstration of a phone that transmitted speech was what ultimately secured his place in the history books.

Source :
http://www.teleclick.ca/2008/01/the-telephone-gambit-casts-shadows-on-legacy-of-alexander-graham-bell/

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