Morning journal and courier., 1883-08-09
SouruaI xna Gallrier.
Thursday, August 3. 1883.

THE DRAW BAUGM TELEPHONE.
 The telephone business grows more and more interesting. The telephone companies now doing business in tho United States under grants from the Bell Telephone com pany have an aggregate capitalization of $1oo, ,0O0, 900, and it is claimed that when the country is fully supplied with instruments, which are now being put in at the rate of several thousand month, the business will earn dividends on capitalization of $200,- COG, GOO.
 It is not at all surprising that this great business, the monopoly of which depends upon certain patents now the property of the Bell company, should be the subject of attack by various claimants who hope by obtaining decision in favor of the patents owned by them to get share of the profits of telephoning. Thus far the Bell patents have been substantially sustained, but some important decisions are yet to be made in the courts. Perhaps the most important of these is involved in the Drawbaueh case, which has been nearly three years in prog ress. Daniel Drawbaugh, the contestant. claims to have invented and operated speak ing telephone in the year 1869, nearly eight years before Bell applied for his patent. A decision in this case is expected soon, and representatives of the Drawbaugh interest have made public an interesting statement of their claims and the foundation of them In this statement it is asserted that in none of the other itigations, whether prosecuted to judgment, compromised or uncontested, whether in the United States courts or in the United States patent office, have Mir. Draw baugh's claims ever been taken into consid- erstion, or passed upon or compared with those of any other claimant. And it is point ed out that if MT. Drawbaugh can establish that he constructed and successfully operated speaking telephones, whereby the art of transmitting and reproducing speech by the aid of electricity between distant points was carried into effect prior to February 14. 1876, he antedates Bell if he can prove that prior to May, 1875, he had receiving tele- phone having magnet and a diaphragm he outdates McDonough also, and absolutely establishes himself as the first and original inventor of the art of telephony and the speaking telephone. to the exclusion of every one else It is claimed that he meets this demand by anticipating this earliest fixed date by moro than eight years with his prac- tical working instruments :; by constantly de- creasing periods with instruments containing more improvements and nearer approaching perfection in operation; and finally by about one year with instruments containing every thing that the best modern magnetic instru- ments contain and fully the equals of them.
 The writer of the statement gives himself full swing" in the concluding paragraph, of which the following are specimen sentences He Orawbaugh) FSlisS uPeA Ae zsexap heel1 of sketches and scrawls that may have any and all sorts of co post J0c5o ines expectations to which the ingenuity of the inventor or expert may put them he submits nc hszy recollections of interested relatives and personal friends, who mistake what the family genius thinks he might have done for what he actually did; he does not rake over laboratory scrap heap to fish out unre lated parts, ingeniously unite them and assert that they worked in this or that way; he does not bring out some inoomprehensibls con trivance, and claim that if it had this, that or the other, it would have done this thing or that; he does not ask the people of this country to believe that he made the inyen- tion, and put it aside for several years, and did nothing about 1t, and picked 1t up again and completed 1t, this without rhyme ol reason; but, on the contrary, he submits hil claim to the courts and to the public sub stantiated by the instruments themselves that he made and used and successfully ope- 1 rated. And these instruments he freely offers to the inspection of the best electrica experts in the United States, and leaves then free to test them as they please, knowing that the result can be no other than the com plete demonstration that they are speaking telephones. r-
 This is bold and impressive language, bu I it is not entirely conclusive. The Bell com pany has 8 firm hold upon it's possessions which it will not relinquish until it is obliged to. Perhaps the Bell stocks will not be en tirely worthless for some time to come.