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This summer, franceinfo remembers the unusual anecdotes of technology. The American Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent for the first telephone three hours before his competitor.

Like everyone you probably think that the inventor of the telephone is called Alexander Graham Bell. This young Scottish immigrant naturalized American in the United States, a specialist in teaching the voice to the dumb, is known for having invented, at the age of 29, a system for transmitting the voice by electrical signals: the telephone . But, sometimes, great inventions take a roundabout way. And Graham Bell almost did not go down in history as the official father of this invention.

When he filed his patent on February 14, 1876, at the same time, another American, Elisha Gray, also registered a patent for the same invention. There will follow 10 years of trial to find out who is the real inventor of this device that would change our lives.

About three hours

That's not all. Five years earlier, in 1871, a third person, named Antonio Meucci, had also filed a patent for the invention of the telephone. However, since he didn't have enough money to extend it, his patent expired and that's what allowed Graham Bell and Elisah Gray to file theirs. Ultimately ? It was Graham Bell who went down in history because it turned out that his patent had been registered three short hours before that of his competitor Elisha Gray. It took little for the paternity of this invention to pass under his nose.

First cell phone

As for the mobile phone, we owe it to another American, Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola. It was he who created on October 17, 1973 the very first "radiotelephone" and whose name is associated with the corresponding patent. However, again, the title of inventor almost escaped him. A competing company, Bell Labs, created by… Graham Bell, was also working on such a project. But this time, Bell was overtaken and it was Motorola who filed the patent first.

The first portable looked like a big brick, with a big antenna. It weighed almost 800 grams. It will be marketed only 10 years later, in 1983, under the reference DynaTac 8000X at a price of around 4,000 dollars.

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