Telephone’s patent war: Was it Graham Bell or Elisha Gray?

It was Valentine’s Day – February 14. The year was 1876. But what happened on that day in a U.S. patent office in Washington, D.C. surely didn’t sow the seeds of love.

Hours within each other representatives of two men arrived at the patent office. The representative of Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell handed in a patent application to the patent office for an apparatus that transmits vocal sounds through electricity lines, or, in other words, a telephone. The representative of American electric engineer Elisha Gray led a caveat detailing Gray’s intentions to invent the telephone within a stipulated time.

What transpired?

As hinted earlier, what ensued was a lengthy legal battle as to who actually gets priority over the invention of the telephone. The patent wars that followed were ugly and divided people, forcing them to take one side or another.

In fact, people continue to debate this point up until now, with people from both camps firmly believing that the credit goes to the person they support.

But, as you might have already guessed, the verdict came in favour of Bell. And as is often the case in such matters, Bell’s name is more firmly associated with the telephone and Gray’s name is relegated to a lower rung.

This, despite the fact that both these men invented this important device at almost the same time.

Life and death

Their patent applications on Valentine’s Day in 1876 and the legal battles that followed ensured that there was no love lost between Bell and Gray. But their names are now firmly intertwined, especially every time the subject of the invention of telephone is raised.

February 14, however, isn’t the only date that binds these two men. There is another one as well, and this literally means life and death to the two men involved. Gray was born on August 2, 1835 and died on January 21, 1901; Bell was born on March 3, 1847 and died on August 2, 1922.