atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News New book claims Bell stole key telephone idea

From this /. story.

The MSNBC - AP article by Brian Bergstein reviews the book, coming January 7.

The claim is "Definitive evidence that Bell stole the essential idea for telephony from Elisha Gray."

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I know from tech articles/boards/talks, etc., that its always been a rumor... but "Definitive evidence" is a show stopper!

I for one am all up for anything concrete and logical.

Will we stop referring to "Bell" as such and revert to "Gray's invention" or is it hindsight and too little too late?

Interesting (to me) none the less

I don't understand all the hype other than the fact I think this guy is trying to plug his book. If you've done any kind of in depth research on Bell this "theory" is well documented. There are others as well. But the fact remains Bell did win EVERY court case regarding the patent! Period!

I have heard this before, that Bell got it patent first and in any other case he who patent it first owns it.

any saying it "doesn't ring a gray" just would not work.

I know it won't change any industry views as a whole... but makes fun debate for us phone geeks.

I just can't imagine all the inherent differences in the marketing and use of "Gray" systems.

Bell just has a certain ring (pun intended) to it, and heck... Bell as a visual with the audio "bell" just flows and makes sense in your mind.

I think the entire communications craze would have been slower to develop if people called their local Gray operator...

This is nothing new. I have heard discussions and seen reports on this as long as I can remember. Bell's patent was filed first, but only with the hand written notes in the margin did it come close to Gray's patent. Western Union bought Gray's patent, started offering telephone service and did more early development on the telephone than Bell ever did. Bell won the Court suite then paid Western Union for the rights to use their improvements.

Elisha Gray, along with Enos Barton, started Graybar.
History lesson for the day

Sounds like another attempt by a Liberal to rewrite history.

That is also supposedly the reason we refer to the Fifth Ring color as Slate instead of Gray

Didn't know that... one more thing learned for today!

Question. Did the 'thing' that goes DING-DONG or RING get its name from Alex or were they called 'BELLS' BA? (Before Alex) Were they called 'gongs' first, or maybe 'damn noise', or 'ding-dongs'? Again, too much time on my hands! John C. (Not Garand)