Details
BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM. Improvement in Telegraphy... Letters Patent No. 174,465. Washington: United States Patent Office, March 7, 1876. Folio, 277 x 181 mm. (10 15/16 x 7 5/16 in.), unbound, glued at inner edges, red quarter morocco gilt folding case, upper blank fore-corner of first leaf torn away, minuscule chip to fore-edge of last leaf. Four leaves (fols. [2-3] conjugate), [1r] blank, [1v] lithographed diagrams, [2r] blank, [2v] diagrams, [3r-4v] text, double column. Stenciled page numbers 110-117, "9" in ink on first blank page.
THE ORIGINAL PRINTING OF THE PATENT FOR BELL'S TELEPHONE, THE OBJECT OF "THE MOST PROLONGED AND IMPORTANT LITIGATION IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN PATENT LAW" (DSB). Bell had applied for his patent on February 14, 1876; it was granted to him on his birthday, March 3, and officially issued on the 7th. Although a telephone had been invented in 1861 by Philip Reis, "it remained little more than a toy. [Reis] failed, in fact, in the primary object, which was to produce intelligible speech at the receiving end. This seems to have been due to his use of an interrupted transmission current which seriously affected the quality of reception. Bell surmounted this obstacle by the use of what he termed an 'undulating' current. Even so he succeeded only after long and discouraging experiment and he produced three telephones before he felt equal to a public demonstration in 1876 [on March 10, when Bell uttered an intelligible sentence over the phone wire to his assistant Thomas A. Watson in another room]" (PMM 365). Bell's perseverance was inspired by "a persistent belief in [the telephone's] ultimate commercial value, an enthusiasm unshared by his predecessor Philip Reis and his contemporary Elisha Gray" (DSB). The patent provides a technical description of the "vibratory or undulatory" electric current and the instruments invented by Bell to produce and transmit it. The term "telephone", although already coined to describe the electric transmission of sound in 1866, according to the OED, is not used, and Bell alludes only in a significant aside to the possible applications of his new invention: "I desire here to remark that there are many other uses [other than telegraphic signals] to which these instruments may be put, such as the simultaneous transmission of musical notes, differing in loudness as well as in pitch, and the telegraphic transmission of noises or sounds of any kind..." (p. 3). No. 5 of the five itemized objects of the patent is "the method of and apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically...".
The telephone patent and an associated patent issued to Bell in January 1877 were challenged from all sides: "Many claimants...came forward to contest Bell's rights, but after the most prolonged and important litigation in the history of American patent law, including about 600 cases, the United States Supreme Court upheld all of Bell's claims, declaring that he was the discoverer of the only way that speech could be transmitted electrically" (DSB). (See also lot 42).
THE ORIGINAL PRINTING OF THE PATENT FOR BELL'S TELEPHONE, THE OBJECT OF "THE MOST PROLONGED AND IMPORTANT LITIGATION IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN PATENT LAW" (DSB). Bell had applied for his patent on February 14, 1876; it was granted to him on his birthday, March 3, and officially issued on the 7th. Although a telephone had been invented in 1861 by Philip Reis, "it remained little more than a toy. [Reis] failed, in fact, in the primary object, which was to produce intelligible speech at the receiving end. This seems to have been due to his use of an interrupted transmission current which seriously affected the quality of reception. Bell surmounted this obstacle by the use of what he termed an 'undulating' current. Even so he succeeded only after long and discouraging experiment and he produced three telephones before he felt equal to a public demonstration in 1876 [on March 10, when Bell uttered an intelligible sentence over the phone wire to his assistant Thomas A. Watson in another room]" (PMM 365). Bell's perseverance was inspired by "a persistent belief in [the telephone's] ultimate commercial value, an enthusiasm unshared by his predecessor Philip Reis and his contemporary Elisha Gray" (DSB). The patent provides a technical description of the "vibratory or undulatory" electric current and the instruments invented by Bell to produce and transmit it. The term "telephone", although already coined to describe the electric transmission of sound in 1866, according to the OED, is not used, and Bell alludes only in a significant aside to the possible applications of his new invention: "I desire here to remark that there are many other uses [other than telegraphic signals] to which these instruments may be put, such as the simultaneous transmission of musical notes, differing in loudness as well as in pitch, and the telegraphic transmission of noises or sounds of any kind..." (p. 3). No. 5 of the five itemized objects of the patent is "the method of and apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically...".
The telephone patent and an associated patent issued to Bell in January 1877 were challenged from all sides: "Many claimants...came forward to contest Bell's rights, but after the most prolonged and important litigation in the history of American patent law, including about 600 cases, the United States Supreme Court upheld all of Bell's claims, declaring that he was the discoverer of the only way that speech could be transmitted electrically" (DSB). (See also lot 42).