Wired News – AP News
A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime – that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray.
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Perhaps the most instructive lesson comes when Shulman explores why historical memory has favored Bell and not Gray – nor German inventor Philipp Reis, who beat them both with 1860s telephones that employed a different principle.
Ah, history is so fickle…
Just as the public is ravenous to tear apart the mighty still living, we love to tear historical figures apart. Why?
Of course both of those guys likely helped as well as a number of others. Most inventions and discoveries are an accumulation of data from here and there.
Right, Carol. We all stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before us. Even Einstein’s highly famous E = MC^2 is just Newton’s E=MV^2, substituting the speed of light in for velocity.
Was Einstein a thief? I think not.