Talk:Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy

message: Unfortunately, this article is so riddled with bias and errors that it's difficult to know where to start to get it up to Wikipedia's standards.  The article is largely a restating of two recent books attacking Bell that, frankly, have little support in the community of serious historians.  The theory that Bell saw the Gray patent application in February 1876 and stole the idea for the liquid transmitter is nonsense.  Almost a year before, on April 6, 1875, Bell received Patent #161,793 for a primitive fax machine that had multiple liquid transmitters.  The drawing for the patent included a liquid transmitter similar to the one Bell later used in the telephone.  Anyone can look up Patent #161,793 in the Patent Office.  The Library of Congress has at least a dozen Bell drawings of liquid transmitters (or variable circuit breakers that used water or mercury) going back to early in 1873.  The failure to do basic research such as this or understand how the experimental equipment being written about actually worked (or didn't work) was a major flaw of The Telephone Gambit.  It is true that spying was rampant among inventors vying for lucrative patents -- why didn't The Telephone Gambit -- and the primary author of this article -- consider that Gray might have stolen the idea from Bell?  
Does anybody have any suggestions about what to do about this?Heritager (talk) 20:13, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Riddled with POV and Errors 

message: While I'm no expert on the subject, it sounds like the new book "The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret" might give some more points for this article, and should be referenced. --Pordaria (talk) 15:23, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Book 

message: This is an interesting version of the Bell-Gray controversy.  Such historical events are very difficult to sort out over a century later.  It looks like the authors cited have worked hard to ground their versions  with good documentation. But there are at least two statements made in the present version of the article which have no references.  The first is the claim that Gray's caveat filing was two hours prior to Bell's.  If the ledger records the filing two hours later, what evidence is there that it was submitted earlier?  If it is important enough to state, then the reference should be supplied.  The second claim is the mysterious version X of the Bell application.  It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Baker book, and the article states that it was destroyed.  What is the source for version X?  One other thing that would improve the article is a citation for the standard version of the story that this article is disputing.  --Blainster 13:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Questions remaining

message: The article reads better now.  It would be interesting to know if Everson's view has been accepted by other historians, or published in history journals.  Since the book is now six years old, There should be some professional reaction to it.  The only one I could find with Google is a review of the book (subscription required to view) in the Communication Booknotes Quarterly.  I have no reason to doubt his work, but since it is so different from the prevailing histories, it would be good to know if his book has generated a new consensus. For example this article, while mentioning Evenson's book, suggests that it is really Johann Philipp Reis of Germany who invented the Reis' telephone 10 years earlier! --Blainster 22:47, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical perspective

message: Tagging with NPOV as article seems to be contradicting current thought without diverse references. laddiebuck 01:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  November 2006 

message: The article does not comport with US patent practice, which has always been that the first to invent is entitled to the patent regardless of who files first.  The rest of the world follows the first to file rule of precedence.  Under the US first to file approach it would make absolutely no difference whether Bells application was at the bottom of the in-basket, the top, or filed 10 days before.  So this issue of the race to the patent office is goofy under US law.  The whole point of an interference is to determine who invented first. 
The opening line is misleading: 
"The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy considers the question of whether Bell or Gray invented the telephone independently and, if not, whether one stole the invention from the other."
There is no mention in the article of any theory that Gray stole anything from Bell.  
BabelBoy (talk) 04:34, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First to file issue is goofy 

message: There is too much commentary in the article, and it needs to be looked at closely. "Editorial" if unchecked slides over into "original research". Charles Matthews (talk) 06:31, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editorial comment and original research 

message: I can't help but notice that this: 
"Alexander Graham Bell was a professor of elocution at Yale College and tutor of blind children and disable children like children who couldn't walk. He was the actual person to teach Helen Keller how to do such things, not Anne Frank. "
...is a bit...you know...stupid. Not just because it sounds like it was written by a ten year old, but because I am fairly sure nobody has ever claimed that Anne Frank taught Helen Keller how to walk.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:548A:1300:3847:264:532E:FCD4 (talk) 06:38, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A bit remiss? 

message: I am a descendent of Elisha Gray, by way of Carl Collard. I have a copy of Elisha death certificate it’s been passed down. He was my great great great uncle (he was my grandfather’s great (great?)  uncle…. This is a big controversy in my family we feel that our family/ Elisha Gray was completely robbed of this discovery and in the family as it goes the only reason why Alexander Graham Bell was granted the ownership and inventor of the phone was because he was wealthy and Elijah Grey was not, Alexander Graham Bell had money paid the patent office off he wasn’t the inventor of a lot of things actually as we know it he just bought a lot of patents and basically pushed poor inventors out of the way. He basically bought the patent and stole it from my great great great uncle. Elisha had notes and a book that showed all detailed notes and it’s known when he took this all the way to the   Supreme Court that his handwriting was in the margin of this telephone patent that somehow by a miracle ended up in Alexander Gram Bells name. Alexander could not even recall details when Elisha took him to court, sadly though again money wins, just like a lot of rich men they are the ones that buy history. They were neighbors and if you look up Elisha Gray he was the inventor of the first signature “fax” machine which was the first machine to create signatures using self adjusting telegraph relay that he invented. Basically the first signature like a prehistoric fax machine it does not surprise me that he invented the telephone too! Alexander Graham braille in my opinion is a complete fraud half of the inventions he gets credited for he did not invent he only owns the patent rights to these inventions that he bought. 2601:191:8380:11B0:112D:CC13:E7CA:2299 (talk) 01:52, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Descendent of Elijah Gray