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Speaker 1: Alexander Grambell was a genius inventor who gave us the telephone?

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Speaker 1: Or did he. I'm Patty Steele the stolen invention next

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Speaker 1: on the backstory. Sure, we like to think about iconic

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Speaker 1: inventors as kind of stand up folks who had a

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Speaker 1: brilliant idea, then figured out a way to develop it,

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Speaker 1: market it, and then sell it to us. But honestly,

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Speaker 1: that's not always the case. There are more than a

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Speaker 1: few who may have stolen their world changing, big idea

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Speaker 1: from somebody else who had put in the hard work.

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Speaker 1: We know that the dawn of the phone call came

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Speaker 1: when Alexander Graham Bell reached out to his lab assistant

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Speaker 1: via telephone and said, mister Watson, come here, I want

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Speaker 1: to see you. That was the very first telephone call,

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Speaker 1: or was it. It seems Bell got his name in

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Speaker 1: lights after lifting a lot of his plans for the

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Speaker 1: telephone from an Italian immigrant named Antonio Mucci, a guy

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Speaker 1: he worked with at a lab in New York City

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Speaker 1: years earlier. What Alexander Graham Bell a phony? Sorry about that.

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Speaker 1: Like any invention, there are a bunch of people who

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Speaker 1: build pieces of the puzzle, but frequently one comes out

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Speaker 1: as top dog and gets all the credit. In fairness. Now,

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Speaker 1: Bell actually was really into sound and how the human

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Speaker 1: brain processes it. It was fascinating to him since both

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Speaker 1: his wife and his mother were deaf, so his motive

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Speaker 1: was pure. But most history types agree he helped himself

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Speaker 1: to somebody else's invention, or maybe the inventions of two guys,

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Speaker 1: because in addition to Miucci, there were also claims that

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Speaker 1: Bell stole the basics of a telephone patent from another

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Speaker 1: guy named Elijah Gray, where it is Bell paid a

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Speaker 1: clerk at the patent office one hundred bucks to show

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Speaker 1: him what's called a patent caveat application filed by Gray

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Speaker 1: before it was approved. Bell then when on to file

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Speaker 1: his own application ahead of Grays, with pretty similar drawings.

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Speaker 1: But the timing of Gray's claim doesn't really hold up,

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Speaker 1: since Bell also had some other drawings from a few

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Speaker 1: years earlier that had the same principles at work. Actually,

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Speaker 1: it was Miuchi who was one of the most important

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Speaker 1: real inventors of the telephone. He built and demonstrated a

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Speaker 1: functioning phone in New York City over fifteen years before

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Speaker 1: Bell's so called invention, and a lot earlier than Bell

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one. He even filed his own patent caveat,

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Speaker 1: which in those days you could do before you got

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Speaker 1: your final patent. Now here's where it gets uncomfortable for

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Speaker 1: the folks on Team Bell. After Meuci's patent caveat expired

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Speaker 1: a number of times and he renewed it, it seems

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Speaker 1: he couldn't afford yet another ten dollars fee for another renewal,

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Speaker 1: and he certainly couldn't afford the two hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: bucks for a real patent, so his patent caveat lapsed,

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Speaker 1: and that is when Bell swooped in. Not long after

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Speaker 1: the last expiration, Bell filed for his own telephone patent

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Speaker 1: with drawings that looked almost exactly like Meyuchi's from years earlier.

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Speaker 1: When Meyuchi tried to sue, he reached out for proof

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Speaker 1: to the lab where he'd been working years earlier and

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Speaker 1: submitted his drawings and plans before it was sold to

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Speaker 1: Western Union. But new owner Western Union told him all

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Speaker 1: his plans and sketches had disappeared. And where was Alexander

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Speaker 1: Graham Bell working when Meyochi submitted those plans? You guessed it,

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Speaker 1: he was working at that very same lab with him.

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Speaker 1: Of course, in eighteen seventy six, Bell got the first

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Speaker 1: US patent for the telephone. Now, Meyuchi continued with the lawsuit,

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Speaker 1: and in eighteen eighty seven US government actually withdrew Bell's patent.

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Speaker 1: But of course Bell had the money to keep fighting back.

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Speaker 1: Miyuchi couldn't keep up. His lack of money and his

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Speaker 1: kind of halting English made up kind of a lost cause,

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Speaker 1: while Bell had the money and the backing of the

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Speaker 1: now very successful Bell Company to pay his legal bills.

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Speaker 1: So after a whole bunch of rulings in Miuchi's favor,

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Speaker 1: by the way, the Bell Company took it all the

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Speaker 1: way to the Supreme Court for a decision, and there

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Speaker 1: they won. It didn't end well for Miyuci, who, two

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Speaker 1: years after the Supreme Court loss died broke and got

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Speaker 1: no credit. Now, on the upside, Miyochi did get a

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Speaker 1: slew of patents for things like sparkling drinks, coffee filters

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Speaker 1: that we still use today, improved manufacturing for things like

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Speaker 1: candles and fireworks, paper made from wood pull and a

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Speaker 1: ton of other stuff, including chemicals used for preserving dead bodies. Yikes,

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Speaker 1: But none of that stuff made them any money. You see,

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Speaker 1: some people are idea guys and some are just really

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Speaker 1: good at business. But Miyuchi finally got some credit for

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Speaker 1: inventing the tell phone, long after he died. All the

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Speaker 1: way in two thousand and two, Congress finally recognized Miucci

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Speaker 1: as the main inventor of the telephone, rather than Alexander Grahambelle.

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Speaker 1: It was a battle fought by historians and Italian American

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Speaker 1: groups to get Miucci his due. It seemed like Congress

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Speaker 1: had finally outed Bell as a bit of a thief

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Speaker 1: who became a multi millionaire and crazy famous by stealing

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Speaker 1: another guy's work after he got access to the plans

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Speaker 1: while working with him. But weirdly, that decision by Congress

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Speaker 1: didn't really change the story told in most history books.

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Speaker 1: As the saying goes, history is written by the victors.

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Speaker 1: Oh one more thing. You think this sort of thing

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Speaker 1: could never happen today. Wrong. In fairness, there's often an

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Speaker 1: inventor and then somebody else who knows how to make

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Speaker 1: it a business. I mean, it happens all the time.

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Speaker 1: Way more recently, you just have to take a look

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Speaker 1: at Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the Winklevoss twins. Now, those

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Speaker 1: two twins created the four runner to Facebook. Then at

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Speaker 1: Harvard they met Zuckerberg, who basically lifted it after they

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Speaker 1: had hired him to simply build their website. It made

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Speaker 1: Zuckerberg a billionaire or is it last checked, just over

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Speaker 1: two hundred billion dollars. But don't feel bad for the twins. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they lost Facebook and went on to lose a bundle

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Speaker 1: in the explosion of cryptocurrency, but as of twenty twenty three,

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Speaker 1: they're each still worth a little over two billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: So not starting. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is

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Speaker 1: Doug Fraser. Our executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplify Media.

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Speaker 1: We're out with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: listening to the Backstory. The pieces of history you didn't

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Speaker 1: know you needed to know. M