Bell Claims Telephone: Race Against Gray Won
Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both filed telephone patent documents at the US Patent Office on February 14, 1876, within hours of each other. Bell filed a patent application; Gray filed a preliminary caveat describing a similar device. The question of who arrived first became one of the most bitterly contested disputes in patent history. Bell's attorney reached the office first, by some accounts only two hours ahead of Gray's. Bell received Patent No. 174,465 on March 7, 1876, and three days later successfully transmitted his first intelligible sentence to Thomas Watson. Gray challenged the patent in court, and over 600 lawsuits followed, reaching the Supreme Court twice. Bell won every case, but the controversy never fully died. The telephone was arguably the most commercially valuable patent ever issued, and Bell's two-hour advantage transformed him from a teacher of the deaf into one of the wealthiest men in America.
February 14, 1876
150 years ago
Key Figures & Places
patent
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telephone
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Elisha Gray
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Alexander Graham Bell
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Alexander Graham Bell
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Patent
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Telephone
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Elisha Gray
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Antonio Meucci
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Controverse Gray et Bell sur l'invention du téléphone
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test of a telephone
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