Talk:Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy

Riddled with POV and Errors
Unfortunately, this article is so riddled with bias and errors that it's difficult to know where to start to get it up to Wikipedia's standards. The article is largely a restating of two recent books attacking Bell that, frankly, have little support in the community of serious historians. The theory that Bell saw the Gray patent application in February 1876 and stole the idea for the liquid transmitter is nonsense. Almost a year before, on April 6, 1875, Bell received Patent #161,793 for a primitive fax machine that had multiple liquid transmitters. The drawing for the patent included a liquid transmitter similar to the one Bell later used in the telephone. Anyone can look up Patent #161,793 in the Patent Office. The Library of Congress has at least a dozen Bell drawings of liquid transmitters (or variable circuit breakers that used water or mercury) going back to early in 1873. The failure to do basic research such as this or understand how the experimental equipment being written about actually worked (or didn't work) was a major flaw of The Telephone Gambit. It is true that spying was rampant among inventors vying for lucrative patents -- why didn't The Telephone Gambit -- and the primary author of this article -- consider that Gray might have stolen the idea from Bell?

Does anybody have any suggestions about what to do about this?Heritager (talk) 20:13, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

New Book
While I'm no expert on the subject, it sounds like the new book "The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret" might give some more points for this article, and should be referenced. --Pordaria (talk) 15:23, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Questions remaining
This is an interesting version of the Bell-Gray controversy. Such historical events are very difficult to sort out over a century later. It looks like the authors cited have worked hard to ground their versions with good documentation. But there are at least two statements made in the present version of the article which have no references. The first is the claim that Gray's caveat filing was two hours prior to Bell's. If the ledger records the filing two hours later, what evidence is there that it was submitted earlier? If it is important enough to state, then the reference should be supplied. The second claim is the mysterious version X of the Bell application. It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Baker book, and the article states that it was destroyed. What is the source for version X? One other thing that would improve the article is a citation for the standard version of the story that this article is disputing. --Blainster 13:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

> "But there are at least two statements made in the present version of the article which have no references. The first is the claim that Gray's caveat filing was two hours prior to Bell's. If the ledger records the filing two hours later, what evidence is there that it was submitted earlier? If it is important enough to state, then the reference should be supplied.

Evenson explains this on pages 68-69 and I added a reference.

> The second [unreferenced] claim is the mysterious version X of the Bell application. It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Baker book, and the article states that it was destroyed. What is the source for version X?

Baker mentions this missing version on page 120-121 where he writes "Versions E, F, and a third version that was never located, existed at one time and at one place."... "That led to the startling realization that any form of the application originally filed at the Patent Office conforming to version F had vanished."... "That was soon followed by the preparation by a copyist of the 17-page version F1, with the seven sentences neatly interpolated within pages 10 ad 11, and by a different copyist of the 15-page version G, with the seven sentences neatly interpolated within pages 8 and 9.  One of the two versions must have been wrongfully substituted for the application originally filed at the Patent Office."

Baker does not give this missing version a reference letter because his list of versions includes only Exhibits entered into evidence. I referred to the missing version as "version X" as in algebra where X is the the unknown quantity. Baker is confused about when it vanished because he accepts the arguments made by various anti-Bell lawyers who were trying to make the most of examiner Wilber's apparent dishonesty. All these conspiracy theories were based on the assumption that Wilber and Bell and Bell's lawyers had no way to know what was in Gray's caveat until the caveat was filed at the PO on Feb 14. And therefore the anti-Bell lawyers assumed that covert page substitution must have occurred after Bell met with Wilber on Feb 26 and found out from Wilbur the substance of Gray's caveat. The courts did not buy these arguments because there was no credible evidence for it.

Evenson does not buy these arguments either and argues at length on pages 64-68 that the leak came from the office of Gray's lawyer William Baldwin before Bell's application was filed. Evenson concludes on pages 195 "Since the caveat wasn't finished until February 12, the variable resistance claim would have to have been added between then and February 14. And at that time, Bell's application was still in Pollok and Bailey's office." And on page 196: "As we saw, the court rejected [Lysander] Hill's argument. However, his argument was still valid: the variable resistance method that so closely paralleled Gray's was added after January 25.  Based on all of the available evidence, it was most likely added over the weekend of February 12-14, while the application was still in the office of Pollok and Bailey." Evenson does not draw the obvious conclusion that Pollok or Bailey did the page substitution in their office, but that is strongly implied. Nor does Evenson speculate as to what happened to the pages that were replaced. Evenson does say on page 198: "As to the conclusions of this story - we leave that to the reader." Like any attentive reader, I connected the dots. However, I did replace the "destroyed" sentence to say that Evenson did not speculate on what happened to the pages in version X that were replaced.

> One other thing that would improve the article is a citation for the standard version of the story that this article is disputing.

I added: "Bell's patent application for the telephone was filed in the US patent office on February 14, 1876. Whenever this story is told, it is usually said that Bell got to the patent office an hour or two before his rival Elisha Gray, and that Gray lost his rights to the telephone as a result.  But that is not what happened according to Evenson ." Greensburger 03:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Historical perspective
The article reads better now. It would be interesting to know if Everson's view has been accepted by other historians, or published in history journals. Since the book is now six years old, There should be some professional reaction to it. The only one I could find with Google is a review of the book (subscription required to view) in the Communication Booknotes Quarterly. I have no reason to doubt his work, but since it is so different from the prevailing histories, it would be good to know if his book has generated a new consensus. For example this article, while mentioning Evenson's book, suggests that it is really Johann Philipp Reis of Germany who invented the Reis' telephone 10 years earlier! --Blainster 22:47, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The book "The Telephone and its Several Inventors" by Lewis Coe has a whole chapter 2 on Reis. Reis had witnesses who said they heard his "Telephon" transmit intelligible speech. Reis's problem was he thought (or was accused of thinking) that his Telephon used the "make or break" principle of Bourseul, which will not transmit speech, only humming. Bell in his first patent was quite clear on this distinction and the Bell lawyers dismissed Reis's invention as a "make or break" device. According to Coe, Edison tested a Reis device and reported "single words, uttered as in reading, speaking and the like were perceptible indistinctly".

One of the possibilities that I have not read anywhere was that the Reis device may have worked only if the metal contacts were dirty. In 1861-1864, when Reis gave public lectures on his invention, coal was widely used for fuel. When I was a little kid, I lived in an old house that had a coal-burning furnace that spread a thin layer of soot over everything. Every spring my mom had to remove the soot from walls with wallpaper cleaner. Perhaps the dirty metal contacts of Reis' device used the variable resistance feature of carbon that Edison (or one of his workers) discovered in 1873. The Reis transmitter tested in 1946 by Pocock (in the article you referenced) may have had dirty contacts that provided the necessary carbon.

I do not know of any rebuttal to Evenson's theory, other than the one you cited, but I have not searched for one. Greensburger 02:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

November 2006
Tagging with NPOV as article seems to be contradicting current thought without diverse references. laddiebuck 01:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I summarized the theories of the authors Edward Evenson and Burton Baker in their two books. Each author supplements the evidence provided by the other. Both authors have points of view, of course, but that is true about everybody who writes anything. If you will point to specific sentences that do not reflect the opinions of either of the two authors, I will be happy to modify them to be more neutral. Evenson gives a very detailed analysis of what the three lawyers did, and why they did it, and how they misled the courts, although he stops short of calling them criminals. Greensburger 02:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

First to file issue is goofy
The article does not comport with US patent practice, which has always been that the first to invent is entitled to the patent regardless of who files first. The rest of the world follows the first to file rule of precedence. Under the US first to file approach it would make absolutely no difference whether Bells application was at the bottom of the in-basket, the top, or filed 10 days before. So this issue of the race to the patent office is goofy under US law. The whole point of an interference is to determine who invented first.

The opening line is misleading:

"The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy considers the question of whether Bell or Gray invented the telephone independently and, if not, whether one stole the invention from the other."

There is no mention in the article of any theory that Gray stole anything from Bell.

BabelBoy (talk) 04:34, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

BabelBoy is correct that under US patent law, the first to invent is granted the patent and that was why examiner Wilber declared an interference and sent notices to the lawyers for both Bell and Gray to begin an inquiry as to who invented first. As commonly told, the story about an apparent race to the Patent Office reflects a misunderstanding of US patent law. However, in this situation, it did matter who filed first because of the rules in 1876 governing patent caveats. This is explained in Evenson's book, pages 66-67: "Because of the way the patent law was written regarding conflicts between caveats and patent applications (Section 4902), an interference could result only if Gray filed his caveat before Bell filed his application... If [Bell's] application were filed before the caveat, then an interference could not be declared.  To prevent the possibility of Bell's application being tied up in a long, drawn-out interference action, [that would require both parties to provide witnessed documents such as lab notebooks and eyewitness testimony,] it was essential that Bell file before Gray - or at least make it look as if he filed first."

Bell's lawyers had learned that Gray's caveat would be filed soon, probably on Monday February 14, and that it would be about "transmitting vocal sounds", the same words Bell had used in his application. Even if an interference were declared, the examiner would withdraw it if there were persuasive evidence that Bell's application was filed first. If Bell filed first and there were no interference, Gray could still file a full application with claims and prove with witnessed documents that he invented it first. That would force an interference, but that was a risk that Bell's lawyers and their client Gardiner Hubbard were willing to take.

The examiner did declare an interference, but Bell's lawyer persuaded the acting Commissioner of Patents, Ellis Spear to overrule the examiner's declaration, because the filing fee for Bell's application was recorded (5th entry) in the cash receipts journal several hours before Gray's filing fee was recorded (39th entry).

Therefore, yes there was a race to the patent office and it did matter who filed first, but only to avoid an interference.

I clarified this in the section "Who got to the patent office first?" Greensburger (talk) 07:16, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Editorial comment and original research
There is too much commentary in the article, and it needs to be looked at closely. "Editorial" if unchecked slides over into "original research". Charles Matthews (talk) 06:31, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

A bit remiss?
I can't help but notice that this:

"Alexander Graham Bell was a professor of elocution at Yale College and tutor of blind children and disable children like children who couldn't walk. He was the actual person to teach Helen Keller how to do such things, not Anne Frank. "

...is a bit...you know...stupid. Not just because it sounds like it was written by a ten year old, but because I am fairly sure nobody has ever claimed that Anne Frank taught Helen Keller how to walk. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:548A:1300:3847:264:532E:FCD4 (talk) 06:38, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Descendent of Elijah Gray
I am a descendent of Elisha Gray, by way of Carl Collard. I have a copy of Elisha death certificate it’s been passed down. He was my great great great uncle (he was my grandfather’s great (great?) uncle…. This is a big controversy in my family we feel that our family/ Elisha Gray was completely robbed of this discovery and in the family as it goes the only reason why Alexander Graham Bell was granted the ownership and inventor of the phone was because he was wealthy and Elijah Grey was not, Alexander Graham Bell had money paid the patent office off he wasn’t the inventor of a lot of things actually as we know it he just bought a lot of patents and basically pushed poor inventors out of the way. He basically bought the patent and stole it from my great great great uncle. Elisha had notes and a book that showed all detailed notes and it’s known when he took this all the way to the   Supreme Court that his handwriting was in the margin of this telephone patent that somehow by a miracle ended up in Alexander Gram Bells name. Alexander could not even recall details when Elisha took him to court, sadly though again money wins, just like a lot of rich men they are the ones that buy history. They were neighbors and if you look up Elisha Gray he was the inventor of the first signature “fax” machine which was the first machine to create signatures using self adjusting telegraph relay that he invented. Basically the first signature like a prehistoric fax machine it does not surprise me that he invented the telephone too! Alexander Graham braille in my opinion is a complete fraud half of the inventions he gets credited for he did not invent he only owns the patent rights to these inventions that he bought. 2601:191:8380:11B0:112D:CC13:E7CA:2299 (talk) 01:52, 10 January 2022 (UTC)