The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players [Paperback]

A. Edward Evenson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 259 pages
• Publisher: Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786408839
• ISBN-13: 978-0786408832
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,617,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Technology History Revisited, December 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players (Paperback)

To appreciate the history of technological invention it's important to understand society and the scientific community at the time the inventors lived, as well as the political and industrial forces.

The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876 is a good introduction to understanding science and society at the time Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and a lot of their contemporary inventors, engineers and scientists changed the world by introducing electric lighting and telecommunicatins to the homes and offices.

The book may appear somewhat biased against Bell and focus mainly on the battle between Bell and Gray. People like Emile Berliner and Edison get only cursory treatment, and Antonio meucci is hardly mentioned. At times the author treats information from newspaper clippings with the same authority as official records. Readers are adviced to check the footnotes.

Still, the book is recommended reading for anyone interested in the history of technology.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A focused, no-nonsense, well-written biography., January 23, 2010

By 

Tom Brody (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players (Paperback)

THE TELEPHONE PATENT CONSPIRACY OF 1876 by A.E. Evenson is 259 page long. This is a dramatic account of Alexander Graham Bell's success in patenting prophetic claims to a telephone, success at gaining patent priority over a competitor's patent application, and success in settling a lawsuit involving Western Union. The book will be a riveting and dramatic read for all patent attorneys and patent agents.

The book contains small photos and diagrams, e.g., of Bell (page 7), Elisha Gray, Bell's competitor who also invented the telephone (p. 14), the dial telegraph (p. 31), facsimile machine and pictures that it transmitted (p. 33-34), gallow telephone (p. 54), lab notebook drawings (p. 96-97), McDonough device (p. 142), Reis device (p. 156), drawing from Grey's patent (p. 222), and drawings from Bell's patents (p. 226, 234, 237).

The characters in this book include following:

FATHER. Bell's father was an authority on speech disorders. Bell went into the same profession, and later courted and married Mabel Hubbard. Mabel's father was an ingenious entrepeneur, who established water and gas companies, proposed legislation (p. 19-20), ran Bell's company, implemented the clever strategy of leasing rather than selling phones (p. 125), and implemented a lawsuit against Western Union, where the result of the settlement was beneficial to both parties (p. 131-140).

ATTORNEYS. Bell's attorneys, Anthony Pollack and Marcellus Bailey are actually the main characters in this book, as they engineered Bell's filing strategies, including the notorious Valentine's Day filing of Feb. 14, 1876, which gave Bell priority over Elisha Gray's competing filing (Gray filed a "caveat").

ELISHA GRAY. It is common for one particular invention to be invented by two totally separate parties. This fact is the basis for present-day Interference practice. Moreover, it is typical for one person to invent a device that doesn't really work well, and for another person to leap-frog ahead, by making an improvement on the device, and so on. From this book, it can be concluded that Elisha Gray and Bell each, independently invented the telephone, and that Bell invented a device that could transmit inarticulate noises from a person's voice, while Gray invented a device that could transmit articulate speech. (This book does not dwell much on the characteristics of Gray's own devices.)

BAD GUYS. The bad guys in this book are Zenas Wilber, an alcoholic patent examiner who complied with Pollack's requests (to get money for his liquor habit), and Acting Commissioner of Patents Ellis Spear, who bended the rules (for reasons unknown) of patent priority, enabling Bell's regular patent application to acquire priority over Gray's caveat.

CONTEMPORARY CONCEPTS IN PATENT LAW. Attorneys and agents will like this book because they will recognize many concepts of patent law dating from circa 1876, which are still current today. These include interferences (the main topic of this book), double patenting (p. 59), filing a foreign counterpart patent application (p. 60), oaths (p. 77), prosecution delays (Bell's amazing 11-day prosecution time) (p. 80), conflict of interest (Elisha Gray's attorney worked for Bell) (p. 86), fraud (p. 92, 176-187), broad claims ("vocal sounds") versus narrow claims ("articulate speech") (p. 99), inventorship (Elisha Gray foolishly admitted that he did not invent the telephone) (p. 110-113), prophetic claims to non-enabled inventions (p. 132).

Attorneys and agents will also be fascinated with the "caveat," which is an obsolete counterpart of today's Provisional patent application. The main issue in this book was that a regular patent application filed before a competitor's caveat will not delay the patent application. But a regular patent application filed after a competitor's caveat can result in a time-consuming interference.

Bell's two main inventions were the harmonic telegraph, which never worked well and was never commercialized by Bell, and the telephone, which became the basis of Bell's industrial empire. Intrigue in this book comes from Bell's alleged behaviors (actually his attorney's behaviors) at misappropriating Elisha Gray's idea of a wire vibrating in water (rather than in mercury), and in Bell's successful attempt at winning priority over Gray's caveat.

DETAILS OF CONSPIRACY: Details of the 1876 conspiracy are as follows:

Feb. 14, 1876. Bell files his patent. It was carried directly to examiner Wilber, and it became the 5th application filed that day. A corresponding (but not identical) patent application was being filed, for Bell, in England by George Brown (Brown left for England on Jan. 26, 1876). The application in Brown's hands stated that undulatory currents could be made only by inductive currents (with no mention of variable resistance) (page 178).

Feb. 14, 1876. Elisha Gray filed his caveat on the same day as Bell's application, some two hours earlier than Bell's application, but Gray's caveat was recorded as the 39th application of the day.

Feb. 19, 1876. Examiner Wilber notified Bell's attorneys and Gray's attorneys of possible interference. But an actual interference was not officially declared at this point or at any later point.

February switcheroo. Bell's application, as originally filed, did not describe "variable resistance." (page 176). It was suspected that Bell had copied "variable resistance" from Gray's caveat, and that Bell had given examiner Wilber a replacement patent application containing "variable resistance." (pages 176-177). This suspicion was based on two thnigs: (1) Examiner Wilber had spent an hour showing Bell the caveat of Wilber, and (2) Discrepencies between the application in Brown's possession for use in filing in England, and by Bell's U.S. patent as issued on March 7, 1876. A later decision by the U.S. Supreme Court reveals the allegation that Bell had committed fraud, in engaging in this switcheroo. But the Court found Bell innocent (pages 180-185).

Feb. 24, 1876. Bell's attorneys sent a letter to Acting Commissioner Spear, requesting that an interference not be declared. Spear agrees to this, but there was no legal basis for Spear's agreement. What Spear did was illegal.

March 7, 1876. Bell's patent No. 174,465 is published. Claim 5 reads, "The method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal sounds . . . by causing electrical undulations."

March 10, 1876. Articulate speech first transmitted by Bell ("Mr. Watson come here. I want to see you."). Before this time, at the time of Bell's filing of his application, Bell had succeeded in only transmitting inarticulate "vocal sounds." The working device contained water, rather than mercury. Mercury, not water, was disclosed in Bell's patent of March 7, 1876. The use of water might have been fraudulantly copied by Bell from Gray's caveat, during Bell's meeting with examiner Wilber (page 166).

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A quick read for those in the patent field., November 28, 2003

By 

Tom Brody (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players (Paperback)

This book will be a quick read for those in the patent field. After one or two sittings, you'll discover that you've effortlessly reached page one hundred. Although the author does not reveal his credentials or experience, it is clear that he does have some writing experience, as the journey through the pages is a smooth one. The book focuses on details, but also frequently steps back to show you the big picture. For example, there is periodic commentary on the many telegraphic and telephonic machines produced by other inventors around the world, at the time of Bell. Although the footnotes to the first chapter are not inspiring (they include an encyclopedia; scholars would never cite a watered-down tertiary source like an encyclopedia), the sources cited for later chapters are better, e.g., legal depositions. If there could be any improvement in the book, it would be to include step-by-step instructions on how to assemble one or two of the early devices described in the text, e.g., the acidic water device shown on page 96. The author acknowledges Stephen Mican as a helper. Mr. Mican is an experienced patent attorney, having worked on about 40 patents for companies in Milwaukee, Rockford, Chicago, and Rockville, MD, and for the U.S. Navy. Mr. Mican is also an inventor, being listed as the sole inventor of U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,393. One wonders if the book would have been substantially different if it had been written by a historian or by a patent attorney. Readers familiar with patent law will find this book to be filled with intrigue and insights into the history of the USPTO, but other people would probably rather be doing other things with their time.