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I've never been one to support
conspiracy theories, but many inventions have had more than one
inventor working on them at the same time. So while you might not
recognize the names of Elisha Gray, Lizzie Magie or Nikola Tesla,
you certainly know the inventions they may -- or may not -- have
created.
Who's on the phone -- Bell or Gray?
While it is Alexander Graham
Bell who is credited with inventing the telephone in 1876, there was
another person who tried to patent the telephone during the same
year as Bell. In fact, Elisha Gray arrived at the patent office to
apply for a patent for his version of the telephone on the very
same day as Bell -- just two hours later!
Bell was awarded the patent,
but the case went to court; in fact, it went all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court. Since Bell kept better records of his design than
Gray did, his patent was sustained and the rest, as they say, is
history. Elisha Gray did go on to invent and patent the facsimile
telegraph system in 1888, while Bell went back to working with deaf
children after giving all of his American Bell Telephone
Company stock to his new bride on their wedding day.
Other inventors later staked a
claim to inventing the telephone. Bell's patent, which to this day
remains the most valuable patent in history, faced more than 600
lawsuits. None changed Bell's status as the official inventor of the
telephone, though.
Did Charles Darrow have a
monopoly on the world's best-selling board game?
Not many people recognize the
name of Lizzie Magie as the inventor of the board game Monopoly, but
then again, not too many people recognize the name of the person who
is widely considered to be the inventor of the game, Charles Darrow.
In 1904 Lizzie created "The Landlord's Game" to teach people the
unfairness of realty and tax systems. Soon people were customizing
the game to reflect their own neighborhoods.
Charles Darrow of Germantown,
Pa., played one of these games at a friend's house. He then began
manufacturing the games himself and selling them for $4 apiece. When
he couldn't keep up with demand, he wrote to Parker Brothers to see
if they would license it from him. The company rejected him at
first, citing 52 fundamental flaws with the game. When they heard
how well the game sold during the Christmas season of 1934, they
reconsidered. More than half a billion people have played Monopoly
since.
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second column in this article] |
"Marconi is a good fellow. … He is using 17 of my patents."
While many inventors
contributed to the development of radio, Nikola Tesla is probably
its main inventor. Guglielmo Marconi, though, is the one who
received credit -- and wealth -- for the invention of radio.
Tesla filed his basic radio
patent applications in 1897, three years before Marconi filed his;
as a result, Marconi's applications were turned down. Yet it was
Marconi who was the first to transmit and receive signals across the
Atlantic Ocean when he signaled the letter "S" from Cornwall,
England, to Newfoundland, Canada, in 1901.
When
one of Tesla's engineers said, "Looks as if Marconi got the jump on
you," Tesla replied, "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He
is using 17 of my patents." But in 1904, for some unknown reason,
the patent office suddenly reversed its rulings and awarded the main
patent to Marconi. The history books began to refer to Marconi as
"the father of radio" when he won the Nobel Prize in 1909, prompting
Tesla to sue the Marconi Company for infringement. Tesla lost
because he didn't have the funds to finance the case. The patent
office reversed its decision in 1943 when the Marconi Company sued
the U. S. government for use of its patents in World War I. When it
was all said and done, though, Marconi had become a wealthy man,
while Tesla had gone broke.
[Paul
Niemann]
Invention Mysteries is written
each week by Paul Niemann, who was the only person to invent the
Impeachment card game in 1998. He can be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2003
Last week's column in LDN:
"What's so interesting about a postage stamp?"
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