Talk:Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy

Questions remaining

This is an interesting version of the Bell-Gray controversy. Such historical events are very difficult to sort out over a century later. It looks like the authors cited have worked hard to ground their versions with good documentation. But there are at least two statements made in the present version of the article which have no references. The first is the claim that Gray's caveat filing was two hours prior to Bell's. If the ledger records the filing two hours later, what evidence is there that it was submitted earlier? If it is important enough to state, then the reference should be supplied. The second claim is the mysterious version X of the Bell application. It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Baker book, and the article states that it was destroyed. What is the source for version X? One other thing that would improve the article is a citation for the standard version of the story that this article is disputing. --Blainster 13:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

> "But there are at least two statements made in the present version of the article which have no references. The first is the claim that Gray's caveat filing was two hours prior to Bell's. If the ledger records the filing two hours later, what evidence is there that it was submitted earlier? If it is important enough to state, then the reference should be supplied.

Evenson explains this on pages 68-69 and I added a reference.

> The second [unreferenced] claim is the mysterious version X of the Bell application. It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Baker book, and the article states that it was destroyed. What is the source for version X?

Baker mentions this missing version on page 120-121 where he writes "Versions E, F, and a third version that was never located, existed at one time and at one place."... "That led to the startling realization that any form of the application originally filed at the Patent Office conforming to version F had vanished."... "That was soon followed by the preparation by a copyist of the 17-page version F1, with the seven sentences neatly interpolated within pages 10 ad 11, and by a different copyist of the 15-page version G, with the seven sentences neatly interpolated within pages 8 and 9. One of the two versions must have been wrongfully substituted for the application originally filed at the Patent Office."

Baker does not give this missing version a reference letter because his list of versions includes only Exhibits entered into evidence. I referred to the missing version as "version X" as in algebra where X is the the unknown quantity. Baker is confused about when it vanished because he accepts the arguments made by various anti-Bell lawyers who were trying to make the most of examiner Wilber's apparent dishonesty. All these conspiracy theories were based on the assumption that Wilber and Bell and Bell's lawyers had no way to know what was in Gray's caveat until the caveat was filed at the PO on Feb 14. And therefore the anti-Bell lawyers assumed that covert page substitution must have occurred after Bell met with Wilber on Feb 26 and found out from Wilbur the substance of Gray's caveat. The courts did not buy these arguments because there was no credible evidence for it.

Evenson does not buy these arguments either and argues at length on pages 64-68 that the leak came from the office of Gray's lawyer William Baldwin before Bell's application was filed. Evenson concludes on pages 195 "Since the caveat wasn't finished until February 12, the variable resistance claim would have to have been added between then and February 14. And at that time, Bell's application was still in Pollok and Bailey's office." And on page 196: "As we saw, the court rejected [Lysander] Hill's argument. However, his argument was still valid: the variable resistance method that so closely paralleled Gray's was added after January 25. Based on all of the available evidence, it was most likely added over the weekend of February 12-14, while the application was still in the office of Pollok and Bailey." Evenson does not draw the obvious conclusion that Pollok or Bailey did the page substitution in their office, but that is strongly implied. Nor does Evenson speculate as to what happened to the pages that were replaced. Evenson does say on page 198: "As to the conclusions of this story - we leave that to the reader." Like any attentive reader, I connected the dots. However, I did replace the "destroyed" sentence to say that Evenson did not speculate on what happened to the pages in version X that were replaced.

> One other thing that would improve the article is a citation for the standard version of the story that this article is disputing.

I added: "Bell's patent application for the telephone was filed in the US patent office on February 14, 1876. Whenever this story is told, it is usually said 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. But that is not what happened according to Evenson." Greensburger 03:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Historical perspective

The article reads better now. It would be interesting to know if Everson's view has been accepted by other historians, or published in history journals. Since the book is now six years old, There should be some professional reaction to it. The only one I could find with Google is a review of the book (subscription required to view) in the Communication Booknotes Quarterly. I have no reason to doubt his work, but since it is so different from the prevailing histories, it would be good to know if his book has generated a new consensus. For example this article, while mentioning Evenson's book, suggests that it is really Johann Philipp Reis of Germany who invented the Reis' telephone 10 years earlier! --Blainster 22:47, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The book "The Telephone and its Several Inventors" by Lewis Coe has a whole chapter 2 on Reis. Reis had witnesses who said they heard his "Telephon" transmit intelligible speech. Reis's problem was he thought (or was accused of thinking) that his Telephon used the "make or break" principle of Bourseul, which will not transmit speech, only humming. Bell in his first patent was quite clear on this distinction and the Bell lawyers dismissed Reis's invention as a "make or break" device. According to Coe, Edison tested a Reis device and reported "single words, uttered as in reading, speaking and the like were perceptible indistinctly".

One of the possibilities that I have not read anywhere was that the Reis device may have worked only if the metal contacts were dirty. In 1861-1864, when Reis gave public lectures on his invention, coal was widely used for fuel. When I was a little kid, I lived in an old house that had a coal-burning furnace that spread a thin layer of soot over everything. Every spring my mom had to remove the soot from walls with wallpaper cleaner. Perhaps the dirty metal contacts of Reis' device used the variable resistance feature of carbon that Edison (or one of his workers) discovered in 1873. The Reis transmitter tested in 1946 by Pocock (in the article you referenced) may have had dirty contacts that provided the necessary carbon.

I do not know of any rebuttal to Evenson's theory, other than the one you cited, but I have not searched for one. Greensburger 02:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

November 2006

Tagging with NPOV as article seems to be contradicting current thought without diverse references. laddiebuck 01:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I summarized the theories of the authors Edward Evenson and Burton Baker in their two books. Each author supplements the evidence provided by the other. Both authors have points of view, of course, but that is true about everybody who writes anything. If you will point to specific sentences that do not reflect the opinions of either of the two authors, I will be happy to modify them to be more neutral. Evenson gives a very detailed analysis of what the three lawyers did, and why they did it, and how they misled the courts, although he stops short of calling them criminals. Greensburger 02:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)