- Love Was Not in The Air
On Valentine's Day 1876 Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both hurried to the United States Patent Office to be the first to file a patent application for the telephone. The patent for the telephone is thought to be the most valuable patent ever granted. On that fateful Valentine's Day, Marcellus Bailey, Bell's patent attorney filed for a patent entitled "Improvements in Telegraphy." A few hours after Bell's Attorney filed his patent application, Elisha Gray, went to the patent office to file his Caveat, which announced his intention to file for a patent within three months, for "the art of transmitting vocal sounds or conversations telegraphically through an electric circuit." While many have said that if Bell's attorney had been slower in getting to the patent office, it would have been the Gray telephone, that history would remember, however, this was not true. Under US patent laws in 1876, a patent would be granted to the first to invent and not the first to file and therefore it should not have made any difference whether Bell or Gray filed first.
On February 19, Zenas Fisk Wilber, the patent examiner for both Bell's application and Gray's caveat, noticed that Bell's application claimed the same variable resistance feature described in Gray's caveat and both described an invention for "transmitting vocal sounds". Bell's application was suspended for 3 months to allow Gray to file a full patent application with claims.If Gray's claims claimed the same subject matter as Bell's claims, the examiner would begin "interference" proceedings to determine which inventor was the first to invent the variable resistance feature.
Gray's lawyer William D. Baldwin had been mistakenly told that Bell's application had been notarized on January 20, 1876. Baldwin advised Gray and Gray's sponsor Samuel S. White to abandon the caveat and not to file a patent application for the telephone. Gray abandoned his caveat, which opened the door to Bell being granted U.S. Patent 174,465 for the telephone on March 7, 1876.
A massive raft of lawsuits, around 600, were brought challenging Bell's patent. Despite this, Bell emerged as the inventor of the telephone. The lawsuits centered around the fact that the key to the telephone, variable resistance, was written in the margin of Bell's application, as though added later (perhaps, it was claimed, after Bell had read Gray's Caveat, which also included the principle), became a principle issue. Still, the courts consistently found in Bell's favor.
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