Comment (0)Maybe you've seen reports about a new book that claims to have uncovered evidence showing that none other than Alexander Graham Bell nicked some pretty important details from Elisha Gray, a rival inventor.
In an AP report about the book -- The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret, due out January 7 -- a lab notebook of Bell's may serve as the "smoking gun":
The notebook details the false starts Bell encountered as he and assistant Thomas Watson tried transmitting sound electromagnetically over a wire. Then, after a 12-day gap in 1876 – when Bell went to Washington to sort out patent questions about his work – he suddenly began trying another kind of voice transmitter. That method was the one that proved successful.
I guess filing patent suit back then wasn't quite the revenue driving opportunity that it is today. Then again, it was more difficult to get a lawyer on the horn when there was just one working voice line in existence.
— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Cable Digital News
