[Lowfer] Marconi...now Bell

[Ed Phillips]

Peter:

	I've heard this story before and don't know if there's any real way to authenticate it at this late date - it certainly could be.  I've visited the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Nova Scotia and seems to me there was some mention of this anecdote in the museum displays, which included quite a bit of early telephone bits and pieces.  I totally agree with your last paragraph and the fact that the public expects a "father" for everything.  In the technological field that's seldom true, particularly starting with the period of Morse and continuing to the present.  Stuff was too complicated even back then for the possibility that any important invention exactly appeared in a "flash of genius", but was based on accumulated knowledge and prior work.  It's quite common for a developing field of technology to spawn numerous independent but almost identical inventions, sometimes starting a never ending patent battle.

Ed

"Ed,
Thanks for putting out your extensive knowledge on Comms. However I had a limitted idea I wanted to posit with the List, that Bell plagiarized Grey's still wet paten idea (see my last post on idea) with the help of a paten office clerk (later on his deathbed the clerk retold this). That and the fact the Bell's future father-in-law and current financial backer was a known paten laywer. "Hmm," I said, looks like someone was setup on the ways of patens. I'm only unreeling here based on the author interview on the radio program. But I should find the book for more depth. Think it's that interesting.

Moreover, in the public's mind there has to be a "One" for this, another one for that, it has to be unequivocal. That then becomes dogma for clasroom use. Later we find that there is no easter bunny and Columbus really didn't discover what all the kid books say he did. But someone has to be the nominal goat for such greatness. So It's Edison for our lights; Bell for the phones; Ford for our cars -- at least in the public's mind.

Said my piece -- Peter
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>>>>>> Ed Phillips <evp at pacbell.net> 02/20/09 4:30 PM >>>
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Re: Communications Lore Debunked
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	As for the telephone things are equally murky.  There had been a lot of work starting around the end of the US Civil War in the general field and both potential transmitters and receivers were in existence at the time Bell did his work and got his patents, applying just before Gray who apparently had a somewhat more practical system.  I think his work was more original than Marconi's but that's a matter of debate and perhaps doesn't matter.  Again the bottom line is that Bell got commercial telephone service established using both his own inventions and later those of others, most notable being the carbon microphone.  Bell was indeed the "father of the telephone" in the sense that Marconi might be called the "father of wireless telegraphy" - he was a very successful entrepeneur who put all of the right stuff together at the right time and presented it to the public.
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Ed"

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