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The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy concerns the question of whether Gray and Bell invented the telephone independently. This issue is narrower than the question of who deserves credit for inventing the telephone, for which there are several claimants. At issue are roles of each inventor's lawyers, the filing of patent documents, and allegations of theft. == Background == Alexander Graham Bell was a professor of elocution at Boston University and tutor of deaf children while pursuing his own research into a method of telegraphy that could transmit multiple messages over a single wire simultaneously, a so-called "harmonic telegraph". Bell formed a partnership with two of his students' parents, including prominent Boston lawyer Gardiner Hubbard, to help fund his research in exchange for shares of any future profits.〔Bruce, page 129〕 Elisha Gray was a prominent inventor in Highland Park, Illinois. His Western Electric company was a major supplier to the telegraph company Western Union. In 1874, Bell was in competition with Elisha Gray to be the first to invent a practical harmonic telegraph.〔Bruce, page 131〕 In the summer of 1874, Gray developed a harmonic telegraph device using vibrating reeds that could transmit musical tones, but not intelligible speech. In December 1874, he demonstrated it to the public at Highland Park First Presbyterian Church. On February 11, 1876, Gray included a diagram for a telephone in his notebook. On February 14, Gray's lawyer filed a patent caveat with a similar diagram. The same day, Bell's lawyer filed (hand-delivered to the U.S. Patent Office) a patent application on the harmonic telegraph, including its use for transmitting vocal sounds. On February 19, the patent office suspended Bell's application for three months to give Gray time to submit a full patent application with claims, after which the patent office would begin interference proceedings to determine whether Bell or Gray were first to invent the claimed subject matter of the telephone.〔Bruce, page 172〕 At the time, the USPTO required the submission of a working patent model for the patent application to be accepted, with the acceptance process often taking years, and with interference proceedings that often involved public hearings—although the U.S. Congress had abolished the requirement for patent models in 1870.〔(A Simple Fix for the US Patent System: The Legal Requirement For Working Models ), KeelyNet website. Retrieved September 12, 2010.〕 However, Bell's lawyers argued strenuously for an exception to be made in their case, likely on the basis of the Congressional amendment to the patent law. On February 24, 1876, Bell traveled to Washington DC. Nothing was entered in his lab notebook until his return to Boston on March 7. Bell's patent was issued on March 7. On March 8, Bell recorded an experiment in his lab notebook, with a diagram similar to that of Gray's patent caveat (see right). Bell finally got his telephone model to work on March 10, when Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson both recorded the famous "Watson, come here" story in their notebooks. In a letter of March 2, 1877, Bell admitted to Gray that he was aware Gray's caveat "had something to do with the vibration of a wire in water (variable resistance breakthrough that made the telephone practical ) — and therefore conflicted with my patent."〔Bruce, page 221〕 At this time, Gray's caveat was still confidential. In 1879, Bell testified under oath that he discussed "in a general way" Gray's caveat with patent examiner Zenas Fisk Wilber.〔Bruce, page 173〕 When patent examiners investigate possible interferences between applications, it was not uncommon for them to ask questions of the inventors directed at the places of possible interference. In a affidavit from April 8, 1886, Wilber admitted that he was an alcoholic who owed money to his longtime friend and Civil War Army companion Marcellus Bailey, Bell's lawyer. Wilber says that after he issued the suspension on Bell's patent application, Bailey came to visit. In violation of Patent Office rules, he told Bailey about Gray's caveat and told his superiors that Bell's patent application had arrived first. During Bell's visit to Washington, "Prof. Bell was with me an hour when I showed him the drawing (Gray's caveat ) and explained Gray's methods to him." He says Bell returned at 2pm to give him a hundred-dollar bill.〔Zenas Fisk Wilber, Mr. Wilber "Confesses", ''Washington Post'', May 22, 1886, pg. 1〕 Wilber's other affidavits leave out these details. Only his October 21, 1885 affidavit directly contradicts this story and Wilber claims it was "given at the request of the Bell company by Mr. Swan, of its counsel" and he was "duped to sign it" while drunk and depressed.〔Evenson, page 168〕 However, Wilber's April 8, 1886, affidavit was also sworn to and signed before Thomas W. Swan.〔Evenson, page 171〕 These conflicting affidavits discredited Wilber. The April 8 affidavit was published in the ''Washington Post'' on May 22, 1886. Three days later, they published a sworn denial from Bell. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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