About the Meucci or the Elisha Gray discords, perhaps we would all do well to take a deep breath in order to consider Mary Bellis' items and some others' at the following sites:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Ant onio_Meucci.htm

http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/tel ephone.htm

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltele phone2.htm at ABOUT.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexan der_Bell_telephone_controversy

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

About the latter, an extract:

The race to the patent office.

Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On 14 February 1876, Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. patent office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell's lawyer filed an application with the patent office for the telephone. There is a debate about who arrived first.[54]

On 14 February 1876, Bell was in Boston. Hubbard, who was paying for the costs of Bell's patents, told his patent lawyer Anthony Pollok to file Bell's application in the U.S. Patent Office. This was done without Bell's knowledge. Patent Number 174,465 was issued to Bell on 7 March 1876 by the U.S. Patent Office which covered "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound."[55]

Three days after his patent was issued, Bell experimented with a water transmitter, using an acid-water mixture. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water which varied the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence "Mr Watson Come here I want to see you"[56] into the liquid transmitter, Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly... [57]

FURTHER FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Who got to the patent office first?

Bell's patent application for the telephone was filed in the US patent office on February 14, 1876. The usual story says that Bell got to the patent office an hour or two before his rival Elisha Gray, and that Gray lost his rights to the telephone as a result.[2] But that is not what happened according to Evenson[3].

Contrary to the conventional story, Gray's caveat was taken to the US patent office a few hours before Bell's application. Gray's caveat was taken to the patent office in the morning of 14 February 1876 shortly after the patent office opened and remained near the bottom of the in-basket until that afternoon. Bell's application was filed shortly before noon on 14 February by Bell's lawyer who requested that the filing fee be entered immediately onto the cash receipts blotter and that Bell's application be taken to the examiner immediately.[4] Late that afternoon, the fee for Gray's caveat was entered on the cash blotter and the caveat was not taken to the examiner until the following day. The fact that Bell's filing fee was recorded earlier than Gray's fee led to the story that Bell had arrived at the patent office earlier. Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not know this was happening until he arrived in Washington on February 26. Whether Bell's application was filed before or after Gray's caveat no longer mattered, because Gray abandoned his caveat and that opened the door to Bell being granted U.S. Patent 174,465 for the telephone on 7 March 1876.

A thief whose has since been repudiated by the US Patent office. Too bad it's a little too late for Meucci

A damn fraud.

He's a crook to stole Antonio Meucci's ideas. He took advantage of a poor, sick man and connived with a number of WASP businessmen to steal the idea thereby enriching himself at another's expense. SHAME

He's smart but Einstein was 3x smarter I think

Telephone, he invented it, not whoever that other guy is. If it wasn't for him we would all be lost and wouldn't be able to go where we had to go!

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble but in 2002 the US Congress recognised Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell. Historians won their battle to persuade Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death. Finally Bell had been outed as one who found fortune and fame by stealing another man's work. He had access to Meucci's materials and took out a patent 16 years later. "It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged," the resolution stated. He studied design and mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and as a stage technician at the city's Teatro della Pergola developed a primitive system to help colleagues communicate. In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by electrical impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved to Staten Island, near New York City, in 1850 to develop the technology. In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to find financial backing, failed to master English and was severely burned in an accident aboard a steamship. Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his "talking telegraph" so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew it. He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union. Meucci sued and was nearing victory - the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell - when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him. However, Bell did do some good things, like help deaf people (because his wife was deaf).

I'm very glad to have the whole internet thing, and that wouldn't have happened without him. On the other hand, I'm taking away one star because of the incessant ringing of the phone.

how could anyone live without a phone?????

Where would we be without the phone? That is one of the greatest inventions the world has ever seen.

he really changed the world of communication! he invented the telephone By accident! He wanted to create a multi-signal telegraph and he came up with the telephone!!! now that is cool. and the internaet would not be possible without the telephone!!! where would we be without the great alex bell!!!!

Probably the true inventor of the Internet; think about it. No matter where you transmit or receive from you will always cross the same copper wired tip ring circuit he invented.

How would we vote on these without his input!

What an accompilshment this is, to connect the world with wires. He lived during the time that Edison lived, so I'd believe that Edison could make the telephone before Bell, perhaps he was busy on other inventions (i.e. the light bulb, phonograph etc.) Hats off to Alex Bell.