Do you know who is Graham Bell? This is, of course, a rhetorical question since few people on this planet cannot identify the inventor of the telephone in his name.

And yet, 2 hours earlier, maybe even more, would be enough to substitute the name in the entry: inventor of the telephone, with someone else’s!

On the 14^th of February 1876, exactly 143 years ago, at 16:00 in the afternoon, in the Patent and Trademark Office of Chicago, destiny and circumstances dealt a rough card to an inventor who, after a series of unremarkable inventions and constructions, believed that he had managed to create an apparatus that would change not only his life but also worldwide communication.

This was the American physicist Elisha Gray who, jubilantly, went to the Office to patent his invention, only to find out that someone else has “beaten” him to it!

Alexander Graham Bell had patented his apparatus 2 hours earlier!

In the litigation that followed the court accepted that the two inventions were presented simultaneously but acknowledged priority to Bell.

A seat in the pantheon of great inventors and in eternity had changed hands, only due to 2 hours.

On March 7^th 1876, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issues Patent No. 174.465 to Bell, with which 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 sounds…” is patented.

The telephone was at last….a fact! The apparatus with the greatest recognition and use mankind has ever seen!

However, the story does not end here, so simply, because there was a “third” person as well! To find out what happened next and listen to many more stories, visit the Telecommunications Museum.

Because the Telecommunications Museum, via the multitude of objects and records in its Collections, can “narrate” stories from the history of telecommunications in our country and abroad.

Book your visit online and come to meet up close the great inventors of telecommunications and the small or significant moments on their path to their great inventions!