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Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci (April 13, 1808–October 18, 1896) was an Italian inventor. On June 11, 2002, the United States Congress passed Resolution 269, recognizing Antonio Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone.

Biography

Meucci was born in San Frediano, a borough of Florence, Italy. He studied chemical and mechanical engineering at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and later worked in theatres as a stage technician. He married costume designer Ester Mochi on August 7, 1834. He was alleged to be part of a conspiracy involving the Italian unification movement in 1833–1834, and was imprisoned for three months.

In October 1835, Meucci and his wife left Florence, never to return. They emigrated to the Americas, stopping first in Cuba, where Meucci accepted a job at Gran Teatro de Tacón in Havana. There Meucci had developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat illness. While providing a treatment to a friend, Meucci reportedly heard his friend's scream through the piece of copper wire that was between them.

In 1850, Meucci and his wife immigrated to the United States, settling in the Clifton area of Staten Island, New York, where he would live for the remainder of his life.

Meucci constructed a form of telephone in 1857 as a way to connect his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, as his wife was an invalid suffering from rheumatism. Before then he had constructed a kind of pipe-telephone that transported sound through a pipe, as a way to communicate between the stage and control room at the theatre.

Though his assets had been substantial, they were quickly used up in the United States. Not only was Meucci helping his countrymen to reach America, but there was also an expensive accident in one of his laboratories. His private finances dwindled so that he soon had to live on public funds and by depending on his friends. It has also been said that his wife sold some of his inventions, including the telephone, to raise cash, while he was recovering from injuries befelled upon him in a boiler explosion aboard the Staten Island Ferry, Westfield.

Invention of the telephone

There exists much dispute over who deserves priority as the first inventor of the telephone, although it seems Alexander Graham Bell has won honors in histories of telephone development as well as 1890's federal court decisions in the United States for being the first to transmit articulate speech by undulatory currents of electricity. A history of the telephone says "To bait the Bell Company became almost a national sport. Any sort of claimant, with any sort of wild tale of prior invention, could find a speculator to support him. On they came, a motley array, `some in rags, some on nags, and some in velvet gowns.' One of them claimed to have done wonders with an iron hoop and a file in 1867; a second had a marvellous table with glass legs; a third swore that he had made a telephone in 1860, but did not know what it was until he saw Bell's patent; and a fourth told a vivid story of having heard a bullfrog croak via a telegraph wire which was strung into a certain cellar in Racine, in 1851 (Casson, p. 96).

Meucci was recently recognized by the US House of Representatives, in House Resolution 269, dated 11 June 2002, as stated, "Expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged." The Parliament of Canada retaliated by passing a resolution recognizing Canadian immigrant Alexander Graham Bell as the "real inventor of the telephone." [http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/1/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/211_2002-06-21/han211_1200-e.htm In the 1990 motion picture The Godfather Part III, the character Joey Zaza mentions Meucci as the inventor of the telephone. In the television series "The Soprano's", the character "Tony Soprano" also mentions Meucci as the inventor of the telephone. All sources described, however, are non-historical bodies.

Garibaldi-Meucci Museum

The Order of the Sons of Italy in America maintains a Garibaldi-Meucci Museum in Staten Island. The museum is located in a house that was built in 1840, purchased by Meucci in 1850, and rented to Giuseppe Garibaldi from 1850 to 1854. Exhibits include Meucci’s models and drawing and pictures relating to his life.

See also

Further reading

1808 births | 1896 deaths | Natives of Florence | Italian inventors | Italian-Americans | Telecommunications history

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