In the field of inventions and patents there have always been disputes over the paternity of certain inventions. In this case, if Antonio Meucci had 10 dollars, your cell phone would be a telephone .
Italian inventor Antonio Meucci (1808 – 1889) emigrated to New York in 1850 where, after ten years of research, he developed the first voice communicator (called a teletrophone) that connected his laboratory, on the basement floor, with his bedroom on the second floor . In 1871 he filed with the Patent Office a patent caveats , a kind of provisional patent renewable annually. If during the time that the patent caveats is in force another person presents another similar invention, the Patent Office had to notify the first and he had a term of 3 months to request the definitive patent; if after these three months the patent had not been applied for, it went to the second.
Antonio Meucci
In 1874, Antonio Meucci was unable to pay the $10 to renew the caveats patent. He lived on public assistance for being convalescing from burns caused by the explosion of the boiler of the ferry that connected Staten Island, where he lived, with Manhattan. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell he applied for the patent on the phone and paid the $250 stipulated for a definitive patent.
Alexander Graham Bell
Due to fate and chance (?) Meucci's sketches and prototypes ended up in the laboratory where, coincidentally, Bell worked... When Meucci wanted to recover his originals, they had been lost . Meucci filed a lawsuit against Bell for fraud but passed away while it was still pending.
In 2002, at the initiative of Congressman Vito Fossella, the US House of Representatives passed resolution 269 declaring "that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, as well as his work in the invention of the telephone". To date, disputes still continue…
Sources:The Guardian, About