Antonio Meucci

Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci (Florence, April 13, 1808-New York, October 18, 1889) was an Italian inventor and engineer who immigrated to the United States, he was the creator of the « teletrophone”, later baptized as “telephone”, among other technical innovations. He developed a pneumatic telephone (precursor of his teletrophone) that is still used today at the Teatro de la Pergola in Florence and which he later perfected at the Tacón theater in Havana. He created a new galvanizing system, a filter system for water purification and introduced the use of paraffin in the manufacture of candles. He also developed a system of therapeutic electroshocks that he administered in Havana. The Italian government honors him with the title of Inventore ufficiale del telefono.

Biography

He studied chemical engineering and industrial engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, which, in addition to training visual artists such as painters and sculptors, also had professors and laboratories for physics and chemistry.

He married Ester Mochi on August 7, 1834. He was then accused of participating in a conspiracy of the Italian Unification Movement with the secret society of the Carbonari and was imprisoned for three months.

In October 1835, Meucci and his wife left Florence, never to return. They emigrated to the American continent, stopping first in Cuba where Meucci accepted a job at the Gran Teatro Tacón (in Havana). In 1839, Meucci and his wife emigrated to the United States, arriving in Clifton (in Staten Island), which was 3 km by ferry across from the borough of Brooklyn, and 10 km from the borough of Manhattan, in New York City., where Meucci lived the rest of his life.

In his new home, Meucci was always respected as a leading man in New York's Italian community. He had built a candle factory and welcomed any Italian who needed help. Garibaldi stopped by Meucci's house during his American tour.

Invention of the telephone

Antonio Meucci (pronounced [meúcchi]) was the inventor of the “telettrófoni”, later named “telephone”.

In 1854, Meucci built a telephone to connect his office (on the ground floor of his house) with his bedroom (located on the second floor), since his wife was immobilized by rheumatism. However, Meucci did not have enough money to patent his invention, although he did patent other inventions that he believed to be more profitable, such as an inexpensive filter for purifying water and the use of paraffin in the manufacture of candles (which until then had been made with animal fat, very polluting and dirty).

In 1860 Antonio Meucci made public his invention, the telephone, in a public demonstration. The Italian press in New York published a description of the invention, and a copy of the prototype, and the documentation necessary to produce it there, was taken to Italy by a certain Mr. Bendelari, but was never heard from again, nor did any of the offers that arose after the demonstration.

Aware someone could steal his patent, but unable to come up with the $250 (about $7,900 in 2016) the cost of the definitive patent, he had to settle for a cáveat ('notice', preliminary procedure for the presentation of documentation for the patenting, valid for one year) that he registered on December 28, 1871 and which could afford to renew—for $10 (or $314 in 2016 dollars)— only in 1872 and 1873.

An accident, the explosion of the steamer Westfield, from which he emerges with severe burns, forces his wife to sell Antonio's works to a moneylender for 6 dollars. When, once recovered, he returns to the pawnshop to retrieve them, he says he sold them to a young man who could never be identified.

Meucci vs. Bell

As soon as he received the patent acknowledgment, Antonio Meucci again insisted on demonstrating the potential of his invention. To do this, he gave a demonstration of the "talking telegraph" to a businessman named Edward B. Grant, vice president of a subsidiary of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Every time Meucci tried to advance, he was told that there was no room for his demonstration, so at the age of two, Meucci asked for his material to be returned to him, to which he was told that it had been lost.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent that did not actually describe the telephone but mentioned it as such. When Meucci – who lived near New York – found out, he asked a lawyer to file a claim with the United States Patent Office in Washington, something that never happened. However, a friend who had contacts in Washington learned that all documentation relating to the talking telegraph recorded by Meucci had been lost.

A subsequent investigation revealed a crime of prevarication by some employees of the patent office with Bell's company. In a later lawsuit between the Bell Telephone Company (created in 1877) and Western Union, it emerged that there was an agreement whereby Bell would pay Western Union 20% of the profits derived from the commercialization of his invention for 17 years.

Ten years later, in a legal process in 1886, Meucci even had to sue his own lawyer, bribed by the powerful Bell. However, Meucci knew how to make the judge understand that there was no doubt as to the authorship of the registered invention. Despite the public statement of the then Secretary of State: "There is sufficient evidence to give priority to Meucci in the invention of the telephone."

Despite the fact that the United States Government initiated legal actions for fraud against Alexander Graham Bell's patent, the process ran aground in the arena of resources by Bell's lawyers, until it was closed in 1889 due to the death of Meucci.

Legacy

Meucci passed away, and never saw the glory and recognition of his talent, which clashed with his poor knowledge of English and his lack of confidence in the face of legal tricks and the enormous economic interests of the large United States corporations.

On June 11, 2002, the Official Gazette of the United States House of Representatives published Resolution No. 269, honoring the life and work of the Italian-American inventor. In it, it is recognized that it was Antonio Meucci rather than Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone. He also recognized that Meucci demonstrated and published his invention in 1860 and concluded with an acknowledgment of his authorship in said invention.