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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Eves, and welcome to this Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that on covers history one day at a time.

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Speaker 1: Today is February fourteen. The day was February eighteen seventy six.

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Speaker 1: Alexander Graham Bale's lawyer, Marcellus Bailey, filed a patent application

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Speaker 1: titled Improvement in Telegraphy at the United States Patent and

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Speaker 1: Trademark Office. Bill a scientist and inventor, had been working

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Speaker 1: on creating a device that could transmit speech electrically for

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Speaker 1: a while, but other inventors have been trying their hands

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Speaker 1: at creating a telephone too, Particularly engineer Elisha Gray. Gray,

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Speaker 1: a co founder of the Western Electric Manufacturing Company, had

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Speaker 1: his attorney file a patent caveat for a telephone the

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Speaker 1: same day. A patent caveat is a preliminary patent application

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Speaker 1: where an inventor basically says, hey, I've got an invention,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not quite ready to send in a full

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Speaker 1: application for it yet. Then the inventor gets ninety days

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Speaker 1: to file a normal patent application, and a caveat also

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Speaker 1: puts the patent applications of any similar inventions on hold

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Speaker 1: for ninety days while the caveat holder gets a chance

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Speaker 1: to file a regular application. Both Gray and Bail had

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Speaker 1: already used the harmonic telegraph to try to transmit speech electrically,

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Speaker 1: but the controversy extends beyond which of them actually invented

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Speaker 1: the telephone first. Many people were in line for that

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Speaker 1: seat on the throne. Whether one inventor stole the other's

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Speaker 1: ideas for the telephone is the real mystery of the hour.

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Speaker 1: As the story goes, Gray's lawyer filed the caveat called

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Speaker 1: Instruments for Transmitting and Receiving Vocal Sounds, a few hours

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Speaker 1: after Bailey filed Bill's telephone patent. Bell's patent was the

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Speaker 1: fifth of the day, while Gray's was the thirty ninth,

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Speaker 1: so Bell's paperwork went through first. But at the time,

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Speaker 1: the Patent office didn't record the time of day when

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Speaker 1: inventors filed their patents for caveats, and by Gray's account,

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Speaker 1: Gray actually got to the office earlier than Bill. But

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Speaker 1: while Gray's caveat went to the bottom of the basket

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Speaker 1: and stayed there until it was sent to the examiner

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Speaker 1: the next day, Bill's filing fee was documented immediately and

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Speaker 1: his application was fast tracked to the examiner. Because Bill

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Speaker 1: and Gray's patents were so similar, the patent office put

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Speaker 1: Bill's application on hold. The office was set to wait

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Speaker 1: until Gray turned in his full patent application to start

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Speaker 1: in estigating any interferences between the two applications and to

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Speaker 1: determine who had invented the telephone first. But Gray abandoned

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Speaker 1: his caveat at his lawyer's suggestion, so that priority of

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Speaker 1: conception went to Bill and Dawn. March three, Bill was

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Speaker 1: granted patent number one and seventy four thousand, four hundred

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Speaker 1: and sixty five for his telephone, and the patent was

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Speaker 1: officially published on March seven. Three days later, Bill successfully

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Speaker 1: used the telephone model he created, telling his assistant Thomas Watson, quote,

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Speaker 1: Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you. Bill

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Speaker 1: had won the patent to the telephone itself and the

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Speaker 1: concept of a telephone system. But that's not where the

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Speaker 1: story ended. Over the next decade, a number of conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theories popped up. There were suspicions that Gray had stolen

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Speaker 1: Bill's ideas for the telephone, and that Bill might have

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Speaker 1: known about Gray's confidential caveat the trustworthiness of the patent

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Speaker 1: examiner That looked over both inventors patents was called into question,

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Speaker 1: and Bell's lawyers were accused of fraud and that they

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Speaker 1: had stolen the concept of variable resistance from Gray's caveat

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Speaker 1: and put it on Bell's patent application. A federal government

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Speaker 1: lawsuit was brought against Bill on the request of the

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Speaker 1: Pan Electric Telephone Company, which had sold shares of its

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Speaker 1: stock to government officials, and from there the Pan Electric

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Speaker 1: Telephone Company an Attorney General Augustus Garland became embroiled in

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Speaker 1: the scandal. The bail companies had to defend their patents

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Speaker 1: in hundreds of cases, but Bill never lost. The American

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Speaker 1: Baill Telephone Company was doing well and people began to

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Speaker 1: despise the Bill Company's monopoly, but it only grew more successful.

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Speaker 1: While Elisha Gray was live, many believed him to be

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Speaker 1: the true inventor of the telephone, and some people still

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Speaker 1: maintain that he is, though his contributions to the development

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Speaker 1: of the telephone have been totally overshadowed by Alexander Graham

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Speaker 1: Bale's presence. I'm Eve Steph Coote and hopefully you know

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Speaker 1: a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: We'll see you here in the same place tomorrow,