[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 73 (Thursday, May 24, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    IN RECOGNITION OF ANTONIO MEUCII

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                          HON. ELIOT L. ENGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 24, 2001

  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the attention of my 
colleagues the efforts of Professor Basilio Catania of Turin, Italy. 
Professor Catania is the retired director general of Italy's Central 
Telecommunications Laboratory, a distinguished scientist, holder of the 
European Union's first Telecommunications Prize, holder of Italy's 
internationally acclaimed Marconi Prize. Following years of meticulous 
research, Professor Catania is now trying to bring to light the merits 
of Mr. Antonio Meucci, who claimed that he and not Alexander Graham 
Bell invented the telephone. In October 2000, at New York University, 
Professor Catania presented ``Antonio Meucci, Inventor of the 
Telephone: Unearthing the Legal and Scientific Proofs.''
  Had Mr. Meucci been able to afford the ten-dollar fee to extend his 
1871 caveat from the United States Patent Office beyond 1874, the Bell 
patents could never have been issued and we would have a very different 
vocabulary today in discussing telecommunications issues.
  The fight over who actually should hold the patent for the telephone 
and succeeding inventions dates back to the earliest days of the 
telecommunications industry. The federal government even played a 
direct roll. In 1885, the Meucci claim was presented before Secretary 
of Interior Lucius Lamar, who at the time had jurisdiction over the 
Patent Office. Fifty affidavits and the exhibition of two dozen of 
Meucci's telephone models were part of the presentation. One of the 
affidavits was the translation into English of Mr. Meucci's Memorandum 
Book, in which he kept the notes on his various experiments on the 
telephone as far back as 1862. A drawing in the Memorandum Book shows 
that Mr. Meucci had discovered the inductive loading of long distance 
telephone lines many years before the Bell Company. It was also found 
that Mr. Meucci should have been credited with other firsts, such as 
call signaling, the anti-side tone circuit, and the first measures to 
optimize the structure of telephone lines.
  The outcome of the hearings led to a recommendation to proceed 
against the Bell Company. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid 
to this important trial brought by the Department of Justice in January 
1887 United States v. Bell Telephone Company and Alexander Graham Bell. 
This lawsuit was instituted by the federal government against Bell to 
strip him of his patents for fraud and misrepresentation. Appealed on 
demurrer to the Supreme Court, it was determined by the High Court that 
a viable and meritorious contention against Bell had been raised, and 
the case was remanded for trial. The record of the trial proceeding was 
never printed and now resides in storage with the National Archives and 
Records Administration.
  Interestingly, the hearings before the Interior Secretary coincided 
with a lawsuit brought by the Bell Company against Mr. Meucci for 
patent infringement. Sadly, none of proceedings at Interior were made 
available during the patent infringement trial.

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