HEARING THROUGH WIRES: Antonio Meucci
Lastly, this fraudulent action denied the years-previous Caveat of Meucci, which “could never be found at all in the patent records” during later trial proceedings. No mind. Meucci is a legend. A name suffused by mysteries. The Meucci caveat remains to this day on public record. All subsequent telephone patents are invalid. Meucci bears legal first-right. No lawyer today will decline this recorded truth.
All other court actions taken against Meucci toward the end of his life was staged by both the corporate Telephone Companies and the Court itself for the expressed purpose of securing the communications monopoly. The complete and operational Meucci Telephonic System, witnessed and used by countless visitors and neighbors for equally numerous years before Bell, was well documented in both Italian and local papers of the day.
To read the transcript of the Meucci court battle waged around the now aged and infirm Meucci is to witness the fear which large megaliths sustain. Though Meucci was not able to afford the yearly renewal price of his caveat, his priority was damaging, otherwise they would not have taken such measures to examine him publicly. The Bell Company sought to minimize Meucci’s system by calling it nothing more than an elaborate “string telephone” in court proceedings, exposing themselves on several counts of fraud. Scientifically, this line of defense was unfounded. The obviously slack lines made the Meucci System incapable of conducting merely elastic vibrations with such clarity and amplitude. Moreover, the velvety rich tones received through these devices were far too modified, clarified, and loud to be “mere mechanical transmissions”.
It was then hoped that the elderly gentleman would desist the entire crude process and give up. Meucci was publicly and ethnically labelled by leading journalists as “that old Italian, that old…candlemaker”. Meucci maintained his ground to the consternation of the prosecuting attorney. Priority of diagrams, witnesses, working models…nothing could satisfy the predetermined judgement of the court.
To add insult to injury, Meucci’s character was vilified in the press. In numerous pro-corporate newspaper articles Meucci is referred to as “a villain…a liar…an old fool”. Predetermined to satisfy the corporate megalith, a deliberate and shameful court examination had as its aim the eradication of Meucci and his claim of priority. This process would later become the normal mode of business operation when destroying competitive technologies. With no hope of financial reprise in sight, Meucci ceased the excessive court fees. This was precisely what the monopoly wished. The fact yet remains that Meucci was first to invent the system.
Throughout the years, Meucci’s name was not even mentioned in the history of telephonics. Closer evaluation of this true social phenomenon in “information control” reveals that communications history sources were controlled and principally provided in later years by Bell Labs to school text companies. They would ensure that the otherwise complex story was “straightened out”.
It is also obvious that Meucci and his countrymen were never truly “embraced” by the American establishment until they took deliberate action. To the very end of his life, Meucci simply and elegantly maintained his serene statements in absolute confidence of the truth which was his own. “The telephone, which I invented and which I first made known…was stolen from me”.
The more important fact in these matters of intrigue is recognizing that discovery itself is no respecter of persons or indeed of nations. Discovery touches those who honor its revelations. Discovery is an inspiring ray whose tracings are never limited by laws, prejudices, unbelief, nation, ethnic group, or economic bracket.
LEGEND
Eager to maintain their ascendancy in the annals of corporate America, incredible odds were marshalled against the aged Meucci by The Bell Company. In this determined counsel, we see the singular insecurity which frightens all secure investments. In truth, no investment is ever secure, when once discovery is loosed on the earth. What corporations have always feared is discovery itself. It is an unknown. In attempts to capture discoveries before they have time to take root and grow, every corporate megalith employs patent researchers. Their job is to waylay new company-threatening inventions.
Inventors represent the true unknown. They are uncontrolled forces who truly hold the power of the economic system in their grasp. Were it not so, then corporate predators would not pursue them with such deliberate vehemence. No one can destroy an idea once it has made its appearance on earth. Discovery is neither controlled nor eradicated by the powerful. Attempts at wiping out new technology mysteriously result in a thousand diversified echoes, moving in a thousand places simultaneously.
The biography of Antonio Meucci is suffused with the deepest of emotions. I have read the biographies of many great and forgotten science legends, yet have not found one whose pathos completely equals that of Meucci. Despite the manner in which the new world treated him, the dignity of this great inventor is silently mirrored in his every portrait. The face of Antonio Meucci is serene…the face of a saint.