Don't Always Believe The Textbooks Kids

If, on a pub quiz night, you were asked who invented the radio, the telephone and the light bulb, you would answer Bell, Marconi and Edison and receive a big red tick for each but really you are just a victim of mass deception.

Take the radio and Guglielmo Marconi. In 1897, Nikola Tesla filed a patent application for wireless telegraphy. Marconi filed for a patent for the same thing in 1900 and was turned down because it was too similar to Tesla's patent. Marconi tried unsuccessfully for the next three years to have his patent accepted and was rejected each time for the same reason.
The Patent Office made the following comment in 1903: 'Many of the claims are not patentable over Tesla patent numbers 645,576 and 649,621, of record, the amendment to overcome said references as well as Marconi's pretended ignorance of the nature of a "Tesla oscillator" being little short of absurd... the term "Tesla oscillator" has become a household word on both continents [Europe and North America].
Tesla was unconcerned about Marconi's chances of getting the jump on him in the radio stakes despite the Italian continued work in wireless technology, stating 'Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents."
In 1904, the U.S. Patent Office suddenly reversed its previous decisions and gave Marconi a patent for the invention of radio. Tesla was furious and sued the Marconi Company for infringement but was in no financial condition to litigate a case against a major corporation. In an ironic twist, in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's radio patent number 645,576 restoring the priority of Tesla's patent over Marconi but by then the name of Marconi was intransigently linked with the invention of the radio and the real inventor forgotten.

Graham Alexander Bell, the man behind the telephone. Or was he?
In 1860, an Italian named Antonio Meucci first demonstrated his working telephone and filed a temporary patent on his invention. In 1874, Meucci failed to send in the $10 necessary to renew his patent and two years later, Bell registered his telephone patent. Meucci attempted to sue Bell for stealing his idea by retrieving the original sketches and plans he sent to a lab at Western Union, but these records, quite amazingly, disappeared. Where was Bell working at this time? Why, the very same Western Union lab where Meucci had sent his original sketches.
The continuing case of Meucci versus Bell only ended when Meuicci died but in 2002, the U.S. House of Representatives said 'recognition of Meucci for his contributions to the invention of the telephone reported: 'the resolution said his "teletrofono", demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to Meucci's materials and who took out a patent 16 years later'.


The story is well known of how of Thomas Edison offered his assistant $50,000 if he could he improve his faulty DC electricity system.
After months of slaving over Edison's electronics, the assistant came up with the far superior AC electricity system and got shafted by Edison when asked to pay up by claiming it was just a joke and he wasn't actually going to pay him. The assistant was Nikola Tesla, soon to be on the not inventing the radio non-fame, but who else did Edison dump on?
Step forward Joseph Wilson Swan who invented the incandescent light bulb and received the first patent in 1878. In 1880 America, Edison had been working on copies of the original light bulb patented by Swan, and obtained patents in America for a direct copy of the Swan light, and started an advertising campaign which claimed that he was the real inventor. Swan, without the finances to sue Edison, agreed that Edison could sell the lights in America while he retained the rights in Britain and established the Swan Electric Lamp Company.
Edison's company went into business with Swan forming the Ediswan United Company and effectively buying Swan's patent.
Soon enough, Edison bought out Swan completely leaving all records of the light bulb under the care of the Edison Company and leaving every school textbook incorrectly stating that Edison was the father of the light bulb.

Don't believe all you read in the textbooks kids!