Antonio Meucci

Antonio Meucci

Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci (; 1808–1889) was an Italian inventor and a friend of the revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. He was best known for developing a voice communication apparatus which several sources credit as the first telephone.

Meucci set up a form of voice communication link in his Staten Island home that connected its second floor bedroom to his laboratory. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound by undulatory electric current.

In 2002 the United States HRes. 269 on Antonio Meucci stated "his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged." Within its preamble it stated that: "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to A. G. Bell." If Meucci had renewed his caveat, he would have been given an opportunity to prove to the examiner that the device described in his caveat was the electromagnetic telephone described in Bell's patent application.

Indeed Italy considers Meucci the inventor of the telephone .

Read more about Antonio Meucci:  Early Life, Havana, Cuba, Move To Staten Island, New York, Electromagnetic Telephone, Bankruptcy, Patent Caveat, Telettrofono Company, Death, Invention of The Telephone, Historical Debate, Garibaldi–Meucci Museum, In Popular Culture, Other Inventions

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