Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy

The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy is about who should get credit for inventing the telephone. Both Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell worked separately to create a device that could send voices over wires.

The big question was about the work of their lawyers and when they filed important papers to protect their inventions. Some people even said there might have been unfair actions taken.

This story is part of a bigger discussion about who really invented the telephone, with many people claiming to have had a part in it.

Background

Alexander Graham Bell was a teacher who helped people who couldn’t hear. He did experiments with electricity in Scotland and later moved to Boston from Canada. He wanted to find a way to send many messages at once over one wire. Bell worked with two parents of his students, including a lawyer named Gardiner Hubbard, who helped pay for his research. From 1872 to 1876, Bell tried many ways to send signals and even got a patent for a simple fax machine.

Elisha Gray was an inventor in Highland Park, Illinois. He worked for a big telegraph company called Western Union. In 1874, both Bell and Gray were trying to invent a way to send many messages at once. In February 1876, Gray drew a design for a telephone in his notebook. That same day, Gray’s lawyer sent this design to the government to consider for a patent. Bell’s lawyer also sent a patent request for Bell’s work the same day. The government paused Bell’s request to see if Gray should get the patent instead.

Bell got his patent on March 7, 1876. Soon after, Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson tested their telephone for the first time. There were questions about whether Bell got ideas from Gray because inventors often shared news with each other.

Bell's background and use of liquid transmitters

Some people think Alexander Graham Bell might have taken his ideas for the telephone from another inventor, Elisha Gray. They point to drawings Bell made in March 1876 that look similar to Gray’s designs from the month before. But there is strong evidence that Bell had been working with these kinds of tools for many years.

Bell had been using special tools called liquid transmitters in his experiments for over three years before 1876. In 1875, he even got a patent for a simple fax machine that used these liquid transmitters. Bell’s work showed steady progress toward creating the telephone, with many early experiments and drawings that look very similar to his later telephone designs.

Conflicting theories

The courts decided that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone, and the telephone company he founded won the case. Bell made his working telephone on March 10, 1876. It worked differently from the design Elisha Gray described but followed Bell’s own ideas.

Gray’s supporters say Bell’s first test of sending speech over a wire used a design from Gray’s notes. Bell’s lawyers say Bell developed his ideas on his own. Bell’s patent application showed his understanding of how electrical resistance works, which was not in Gray’s notes.

On February 14, 1876, Bell’s lawyer filed Bell’s patent application. Gray’s lawyer filed Gray’s note (called a “caveat”) the same day. Stories say Bell arrived at the patent office earlier, but this did not matter at the time. Gray decided not to turn his note into a full patent, so Bell received the patent for the telephone on March 7, 1876.

Some people have claimed there was unfair behavior, but the courts did not support these claims. Bell’s patent included an idea about changing electrical resistance, which was first shown in Gray’s notes. Bell said he added this idea himself just before filing. Different versions of Bell’s application show changes were made, but Bell said he did this before filing.

Gray felt he was first to file his note, but after learning more, he did not challenge Bell. Some say Bell may have learned from Gray’s work, but Bell argued he developed his ideas on his own. Bell later tested a version of Gray’s design after his patent was approved, just to show it could work, but he continued to improve his own telephone design.

In popular culture

In November 2015, an episode of Drunk History told this story. Actors played Alexander Graham Bell, Wilber, and Elisha Gray. The show said Bell used ideas from Wilber and got all the credit. It made Bell seem like a bad guy and Gray seem like the real inventor. The episode did not explain the details of the controversy.