Who is Antonio Meucci?
The name does not ring a BELL?!
For an Italian old timer though, he is well known and this is his story!
He was a Florentine immigrant who was born in 1808, he studied design and mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and as a stage technician at the city’s Teatro della Pergola developed a primitive system to help colleagues communicate! In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by electrical impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved to Staten Island, near New York City, in 1850 to develop the technology!
When Meucci’s wife, Ester, became paralysed he rigged a system to link her bedroom with his neighbouring workshop and in 1860 held a public demonstration which was reported in New York’s Italian-language press!
In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to find financial backing, failed to master English and was severely burned in an accident aboard a steamship.
Forced to make new prototype machines after Ester sold his machines for $6 to a secondhand shop, his models became more sophisticated!
An inductor formed around an iron core in the shape of a cylinder was a technique so sophisticated that it was used decades later for long-distance connections!
Unfortunately, Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his “talking telegraph” so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew it! It is criminal since patent is a big gift to society and must be kept free! This is another way how some very rich ‘inventors’ could suddenly invent so many devices and file so many patents just because they had money to buy!
Now finally Meucci sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been ‘LOST’.
Two years later another “inventor”, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for the machine, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union!
The name of the other inventor was Alexander Graham Bell and the invention was the telephone! Meucci sued and was nearing victory – the supreme court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell – when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.
In 2002 Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle after the US Congress recognised Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications and as the true inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell 113 years after his death! Better late than never!? Life is not always black and white! There are areas of grey and other colours! Just like the Movie Black which is dark followed by his other movies which are actually very colorful by Birthday Celebrity Sanjay Leela Bhansali!
Now than Antonio Meucci for inventing the predecessor of your mobile phone and sleep!
Good Night!
ramadocblog 