OCR Text |
Show Who Invented the Telephone. There is a good deal in the telephone contest now going on before Secretary Lamar that is interesting when it is disentangled dis-entangled from the legal complications in which it is involved. Certain parties have set up the claim that the Bell patents which confer a vir-1 tual monopoly upon the .Bell telephone company are invalid, because Bell was not the original inventor, but stole the idea from inventions already patented. The claim is set up specifically that one Antonio Meucci, an Italian by birth, but an American citizen by adoption, invented invent-ed the speaking telephone as long ago as 1846, and that he patented .it in 1860. Meucci is still living, a very old man, in poverty and obscurity, while Bell is amassing wealth out of what is claimed to be the invention of Meucci. On this account, that justice may be dose the real inventor, and that a monopoly monop-oly based on an alleged fraudulent claim may be broken up, the government is asked to institute suit to vacate the Bell patents. - - |