Invention Of Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell achieved fame as the inventor of the telephone, but in fact what he invented was the first commercially viable telephone: Johann Philipp Reis, Antonio Meucci and others had already invented working telephones before Bell.

The first public demonstration of a working telephone was made by Johann Philipp Reis (Germany) in 1860, but Reis's invention used an intermittent current, giving a spasmodic signal at the receiver, and never progressed beyond the experimental stage. In 1871 Antonio Meucci (Italy-USA) filed a caveat (a registration of an idea in  progress pending a fill patent application) for a telephone that he claimed to have invented in 1849/1850 and to have demonstrated between December 1860 and December 1861, but he never filed a full patent for his invention.

In 1873 Alexander Graham Bell (Scotland-USA), the son of an elocution teacher, was appointed Professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University where he taught deaf-mutes using the Visible Speech System invented by his father. His interest in acoustics led to the invention of his telephone during 1875 and 1876, using variations in an electric current, which Bell called "undulatory currents", as opposed to Reis's intermittent current. Bell filed his patent application on 14 February 1876, just hours before his rival, Elisha Gray (USA). Bell's patent was granted on 7 March, and three days later he made his famous first telephone call, saying: "Mr Watson come here, I need you" (also quoted as "Mr Watson, come here, I need you "). Having failed to sell the patent rights to the Western Union Telegraph Company, in 1877 Bell and his financial backers formed the Bell Telephone Company, which eventually became one of the largest companies in the world.

Bell's work as a vocal physiologist teaching the deaf and speech-impaired remained his first priority, and in other to pursue this (and his interest in flying), in 1880 he resigned from what was by then the American Bell Telephone Company. Bell maintained that he did not really comprehended the science behind his invention, only that it worked, and he once wrote to his wife: "I think I can be of  for more use as a teacher of the deaf that I can ever be as an electrician."
Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study. Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison