Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci ( , ; 13 April 1808 – 18 October 1889) was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy."Antonio Meucci's Illness". The New York Times, 9 March 1889; accessed 25 February 2009.Nese & Nicotra 1989, pp. 35–52. Meucci is best known for developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone.Several Italian encyclopedias claim Meucci as the inventor of the telephone, including: – the "Treccani" – the Italian version of Microsoft digital encyclopedia, Encarta – Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Arts).
Meucci set up a form of voice-communication link in his Staten Island, New York, home that connected the 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. Despite the longstanding general crediting of Bell with the accomplishment, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities supported celebrations of Meucci's 200th birthday in 2008 using the title "Inventore del telefono" (Inventor of the telephone).Manifestazioni per il bicentenario della nascita di Antonio Meucci, archive date 22 July 2011. The U.S. House of Representatives in a resolution in 2002 also acknowledged Meucci's work in the invention of the telephone,H.Res.269 Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives to honor the life and achievements of 19th Century Italian-American inventor Antonio Meucci, and his work in the invention of the telephone. 11 June 2002, retrieved 14 February 2022 although the U.S. Senate did not join the resolution and the interpretation of the resolution is disputed.
Early life
Meucci was born at Via dei Serragli 44 in the San Frediano borough of Florence, then part of the First French Empire (now in the Italian Republic), on 13 April 1808, as the first of nine children to Amatis Meucci and Domenica Pepi. Amatis was at times a government clerk and a member of the local police, and Domenica was principally a homemaker. Four of Meucci's siblings did not survive childhood.Nese & Nicotra 1989, pp. 6–7.
In November 1821, at the age of 13, he was admitted to Florence Academy of Fine Arts as its youngest student, where he studied chemical and mechanical engineering. He ceased full-time studies two years later due to insufficient funds, but continued studying part-time after obtaining employment as an assistant gatekeeper and customs official for the Florentine government.
In May 1825, because of the celebrations for the childbirth of Princess Maria Anna of Saxony, wife of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Meucci conceived a powerful propellant mixture for flares. The fireworks went out of his control, causing damages and injuries in the celebration's square. Meucci was arrested and suspected of conspiracy against the Grand Duchy.
Meucci later became employed at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as a stage technician, assisting Artemio Canovetti.
In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro of Pergola. This telephone was constructed on the principles of pipe-telephones used on ships and still functions. He married costume designer Esterre Mochi, who was employed in the same theatre, on 7 August 1834.
Havana, Cuba In October 1835, Meucci and his wife emigrated to Cuba, then a Spanish province, where Meucci accepted a job at what was then called the Teatro Tacón in Havana (at the time, the greatest theater in the Americas). In Havana he constructed a system for water purification and reconstructed the Gran Teatro.
In 1848 his contract with the governor expired. Meucci was asked by a friend's doctors to work on Franz Anton Mesmer's therapy system on patients with rheumatism. In 1849, he developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat illness and subsequently experimentally developed a device through which one could hear inarticulate human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (talking telegraph).Meucci's original drawings. Italian Society of Electrotechnics aei.it; accessed 15 June 2015. .
In 1850, the third renewal of Meucci's contract with Don Francisco Martí y Torrens expired, and his friendship with General Giuseppe Garibaldi made him a suspect citizen in Cuba. On the other hand, the fame reached by Samuel F. B. Morse in the United States encouraged Meucci to make his living through inventions.Meucci, Sandra. Antonio and the Electric Scream: The Man Who Invented the Telephone, Branden Books, Boston, 2010; , pp. 15–21, 24, 36–37, 47–52, 70–73, 92, 98, 100.
Staten Island, New York On 13 April 1850, Meucci and his wife emigrated to the United States, taking with them approximately 26,000 pesos fuertes in savings (approximately $500,000 in 2010 dollars), and settled in the Clifton area of Staten Island, New York, New York.
The Meuccis would live there for the remainder of their lives. On Staten Island he helped several countrymen committed to the Italian unification movement and who had escaped political persecution. Meucci invested the substantial capital he had earned in Cuba into a tallow candle factory (the first of its kind in the Americas) employing several Italian exiles. For two years Meucci hosted friends at his cottage, including General Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Colonel Paolo Bovi Campeggi, who arrived in New York two months after Meucci. They worked in Meucci's factory.
In 1854, Meucci's wife Esterre became an invalid due to rheumatoid arthritis. Meucci continued his experiments.
Electromagnetic telephone Meucci studied the principles of electromagnetic voice transmission for many years and was able to transmit his voice through wires in 1856. He installed a telephone-like device within his house in order to communicate with his wife, who was ill at the time. Some of Meucci's notes written in 1857 describe the basic principle of electromagnetic voice transmission or in other words, the telephone:
Translated:
Meucci devised an electromagnetic telephone as a way of connecting his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus being able to communicate with his wife. Between 1856 and 1870, Meucci developed more than 30 different kinds of telephones on the basis of this prototype.
A postage stamp was produced in Italy in 2003 that featured a portrait of Meucci.Antonio Meucci stamp, comunicazioni.it; archived 26 August 2003. . Around 1858, artist Nestore Corradi sketched Meucci's communication concept. His drawing was used to accompany the stamp in a commemorative publication of the Italian Postal and Telegraph Society.
Meucci intended to develop his prototype but did not have the financial means to keep his company afloat in order to finance his invention. His candle factory went bankrupt and Meucci was forced to unsuccessfully seek funds from rich Italian families. In 1860, he asked his friend Enrico Bandelari to look for Italian capitalists willing to finance his project. However, military expeditions led by Garibaldi, in what was about to become Italy, had made the geopolitical situation too unstable for anybody to invest.
Bankruptcy At the same time, Meucci was led to poverty by some fraudulent debtors. On 13 November 1861 his cottage was auctioned. The purchaser allowed the Meuccis to live in the cottage without paying rent, but Meucci's private finances dwindled and he soon had to live on public funds and by depending on his friends. As mentioned in William J. Wallace's ruling,American Bell Telephone Co. v. Globe Telephone Co. (1887), via Scripophily.net. Archived 21 February 2004. during the years 1859–1861, Meucci was in close business and social relations with William E. Ryder, who invested money in Meucci's inventions and paid the expenses of his experiments. Their close working friendship continued until 1867.
In August 1870 Meucci reportedly was able to capture a transmission of articulated human voice at the distance of a mile by using a copper plate as a conductor, insulated by cotton. He called this device the "telettrofono". While he was recovering from injuries that befell him in a boiler explosion aboard a Staten Island ferry, the Westfield, Meucci's financial and health state was so bad that his wife sold his drawings and devices to a second-hand dealer to raise money.The tragic tale of the telephone's real inventor, Antonio Meucci
Patent caveat
On 12 December 1871 Meucci set up an agreement with Angelo Zilio Grandi (Secretary of the Italian Consulate in New York), Angelo Antonio Tremeschin (entrepreneur), Sereno G.P. Breguglia Tremeschin (businessman), in order to constitute the Telettrofono Company. The constitution was notarized by Angelo Bertolino, a Notary Public of New York. Although their society funded him with $20, only $15 was needed to file for a full patent application.U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "The Story of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office". Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office. Washington:IA-SuDocs, Rev. August 1988. iv, 50p. MC 89-8590. . SL 89-95-P. S/N 003-004-00640-4. $1.75. C 21.2:P 27/3/988 – – – – Note: the 1861 filing fee is listed on Pg. 11, and the 1922 filing fee is listed on page 22.U.S.P.T.O. & Patent Model Association. , 2001; retrieved from PatentModelAssociation.com website, 25 February 2011. The caveat his lawyer submitted to the US Patent Office on 28 December 1871 was numbered 3335 and titled "Sound Telegraph". The following is the text of Meucci's caveat, omitting legal details of the Petition, Oath, and Jurat:
Analysis of Meucci's caveat Meucci repeatedly focused on insulating the electrical conductor and even insulating the people communicating, but does not explain why this would be desirable.Caveat, p. 17 top The mouth piece is like a "speaking trumpet" so that "the sound concentrated upon the wire" is communicated to the other person, but he does not say that the sound is converted to variable electrical conduction in the wire.Caveat p. 17 "Another instrument is also applied to the ears", but he does not say that variable electrical conduction in the wire is to be converted to sound. In the third claim, he claims "a sound conductor which is also an electrical conductor, as a means of communication by sound",Caveat p. 18 which is consistent with acoustic sound vibrations in the wire that get transmitted better if electrical conductors such as a wire or metallic tube are used."metallic tube" in Caveat, p. 16 bottom.
Meucci emphasizes that the conductors "for mouth and ears ... must be metallic", but does not explain why this would be desirable.Caveat pp. 17 bottom line – 18 top line He mentions "communication with the ground"Caveat, p. 17 bottom. but does not suggest that a ground return must complete a circuit if only "the wire" (singular, not plural) is used between the sender's mouth piece and the receiver's ear piece, with one or the other person being electrically insulated from the ground by means of glass insulators ("...consists in isolating two persons ... by placing them upon glass insulators; employing glass, for example, at the foot of the chair or bench on which each sits, and putting them in communication by means of a telegraph wire").Caveat p. 17, 3rd paragraph.
Robert V. Bruce, a biographer of Bell, asserted that Meucci's caveat could never have become a patent because it never described an electric telephone.
Conflicting opinions of Meucci biographers