DynaSoar writes “MSNBC is carrying an AP exposition reviewing a book, due out January 7, that claims to show definitive evidence that Bell stole the fundamental view for telephony from Elisha Gray. Author Seth Shulman shows that Bell’s notebooks contain false starts, and next after a 12-day gap during which he visited the US Patent Office, suddenly show an entirely different design, very similar to Gray’s design for multiplexing Morse cipher signals. Shulman claims that Bell copied the design from Gray’s patent application and was improperly given credit for earlier

submission, with the help of a corrupt patent examiner and aggressive lawyers. Shulman plus claims that fear of being found out is the reason Bell distanced himself from the company that carried his name. And whether Gray Telephone doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue, Shulman additionally noted that both of them were two decades behind the German inventor Johann Philipp Reis, who produced the first working telephony system.”

Read more of that story at Slashdot.

Orginal post by timothy