The Bell Telephone: Patent Nonsense?

On that same day, Elisha Gray had filed a "patent caveat" for what he called "an invention to transmit the tones of the human voice." (A "caveat" gave a would-be inventor a year to turn an idea into a working, patentable invention.) In his caveat, Gray proposed that his machine would use a water-and-acid solution, and he included a sketch of his contraption. Seeing two filings for the same general idea, Wilber, the patent examiner in charge of electrical devices, ruled that there was a conflict that would have to be investigated.

Within days, Bell traveled to Washington to meet with Wilber. On March 7, Bell was awarded the patent for the telephone, receiving it only three weeks after he'd filed, which was very unusual. The next day, he returned to Boston, where he drew in his notebook a sketch that was nearly identical to the sketch in Gray's caveat. And he began experimenting with the acid-and-water method mentioned in the caveat. Two days later, it worked.

"The more I looked at this, every aspect of it looked fishy," says Shulman. After months of research, Shulman concluded -- reluctantly, he says -- that Bell plagiarized one of the world's most famous inventions.

That kind of talk drives Ed Grosvenor up the wall. "It's just [expletive]!" he says. "What bugs me is that these things were litigated and litigated and litigated. So many courts looked at this."

He's right about that. Bell's patent was challenged in literally hundreds of legal cases in the 1800s and each time the courts ruled for Bell.

"Here are Wilber's affidavits," Grosvenor says, slapping photocopies on the table. "The affidavit where he makes the accusations contradicts three previous affidavits."

He's right about that, too. Before Wilber swore that he'd been bribed by Bell and Bell's attorneys, he'd previously sworn that he hadn't been bribed by anybody.

Grosvenor rips into Shulman, calling him "unscrupulous" and accusing him of violating the ethics of the history profession: "He's trying to make a case and he takes out of context highly discredited perjury. Does he say that Zenas Wilber three times denied any wrongdoing?"

Actually, Shulman does write about Wilber's conflicting affidavits. Has Grosvenor actually read Shulman's book?

"I have not read it," he says. "I didn't want to pay him the money."

On and on it goes, as the telephone patent controversy enters its 132nd year. Grosvenor and Shulman are hardly the only people sparring over this issue. Plenty of alleged experts line up on both sides.

A. Edward Evenson, author of "The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876," published in 2000, agrees with Shulman. "I have no doubt that Bell saw Gray's caveat," says Evenson, a retired engineer. "When you see Gray's sketch and Bell's sketch, it jumps out at you. They're almost carbon copies. The evidence is there in black and white. Bell saw Gray's caveat, which is illegal."