Bell Stole Phone Idea

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- alexander graham bell stole phone idea from rival -

Book Argues That Bell Stole Phone Idea

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
AP Technology Writer
Wed Dec 26, 2007  

Link to original article

BOSTON - A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime

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[quote]
Elisha Gray                                        From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia                                                                                                Jump to: navigation, search
                                                Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835

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Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy                                       
                                                                                                
   The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversyconsiders the question of whether Bell and Gray invented the telephoneindependently and, if not, whether one stole the invention from theother. This controversy is more narrow than the broader question of whodeserves credit for inventing the telephone, for which there areseveral claimants.


Bell's interests versus Gray's interestsBell supporters cite numerous law suits in which the courts decidedin favor of Bell and the telephone company he founded. Gray supporterscite the fact that Bell's first successful experiment in transmittingclear speech over a wire was on March 7, 1876 using the same transmitter design described in Gray's caveat but not described in Bell's patent. There is a third side to this controversy, expressed in detail in a book by Evenson,which concludes that Bell's lawyers, not Bell, misappropriated Gray's invention.


Who got to the patent office first?Bell's patent application for the telephone was filed in the US patent office on February 14, 1876. The usual story says 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

Contrary to the conventional story, Gray's caveat was taken to the US patent office a few hours before Bell's application. Gray's caveat was taken to the patent office in the morning of 14 February 1876shortly after the patent office opened and remained near the bottom ofthe in-basket until that afternoon. Bell's application was filedshortly before noon on 14 February by Bell's lawyer who requested thatthe filing fee be entered immediately onto the cash receipts blotterand that Bell's application be taken to the examiner immediately.
Late that afternoon, the fee for Gray's caveat was entered on the cashblotter and the caveat was not taken to the examiner until thefollowing day. The fact that Bell's filing fee was recorded earlierthan Gray's fee led to the story that Bell had arrived at the patentoffice earlier. Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not know thiswas happening until he arrived in Washington on February 26. WhetherBell's application was filed before or after Gray's caveat no longermattered, because Gray abandoned his caveat and that opened the door toBell being granted U.S. Patent 174,465
for the telephone on 7 March 1876.


Conspiracy theoriesSeveral conspiracy theories were presented during trials and appeals(1878-1888) in which the Bell Telephone Company sued competitors andlater when Bell and his lawyers were accused of patent fraud. Thesetheories were based on alleged corruption of the patent examiner ZenasWilber who was an alcoholic. Wilber was accused of revealing secretinformation to Alexander Graham Bell and Bell's patent attorneysAnthony Pollok and Marcellus Bailey from patent applications and caveats of Bell's competitor Elisha Gray.One of the accusers was attorney Lysander Hill who charged that Bell'sattorneys, Pollok and Bailey, had received this secret information fromWilber and that Wilber allowed Bell's attorney to insert a paragraph ofseven sentences, based on this secret information, into Bell's patentapplication after both Gray's caveat and Bell's patent application hadbeen filed in the patent office. However, Bell's original patentapplication shows no sign of alteration and Wilber declared aninterference based on those seven sentences. Wilber noticed that theseven sentences contained subject matter very similar to the ideasexpressed in Gray's caveat and declared an interference between Bell'sapplication and the caveat which he would not have done if the sevensentences had not been there. The seven sentences were in the originalpatent application as filed on February 14, 1876. The conspiracy theories were rejected by the courts.
One of the valuable claims in Bell's 1876 US patent 174,465 wasClaim 4, a method of producing variable electrical current in a circuitby varying the resistance in the circuit. That feature was not shown inany of Bell's patent drawings, but was shown in Elisha Gray's drawingsin his caveat filed the same day. A description of the variableresistance feature, consisting of the seven sentences, was insertedinto a draft of Bell's application.
That the seven sentences were inserted in Bell's draft is not disputed.Bell testified that he inserted the seven sentences "almost at the lastmoment before sending it off to Washington to be engrossed." He saidthe engrossed application (also called the "fair copy") was returned tohim from his lawyers on January 18, 1876 and that he signed it and had it notarized in Boston on January 20. But this statement by Bell is disputed by Evenson, [7]who argues that the seven sentences and Claim 4 were inserted intoBell's patent application without Bell's knowledge on February 13 or14, just before Bell's application was hand carried to the PatentOffice by one of Bell's lawyers.

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Gray's disloyal attorneyEvenson argues that it was not Wilber who leaked Grey's ideas toBell's attorney after Gray's caveat was filed with the patent office,but somebody in the office of Gray's attorney, William D. Baldwin, andperhaps Baldwin himself, who leaked the variable resistance idea andthe water transmitter idea to Bell's attorney before Gray'scaveat and Bell's application were filed. It was Baldwin who advisedGray to abandon his caveat and not turn it into a patent application,because, Baldwin said, Bell had invented the telephone before Gray andBell's application was notarized before Gray began his caveat. Baldwinurged Gray to write a letter to Bell congratulating him on his newtelephone invention and "I do not claim even the credit of inventingit...