Top 10 Facts about Antonio Meucci

Telettrofono. Photo by Meucci Antonio. Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Facts about Antonio Meucci

Antonio Meucci’s story could easily be adapted for the stage. His beginnings as a theatre technician in Florence, Italy, and later as an engineer at the Tacón Theatre in Havana, Cuba, gave no indication of the dramatic turn his life would take when he arrived in America.

There he invented the telephone, which would go down in history, but economic issues and his difficulty communicating in English prevented him from being recognized as its inventor, and credit was given to Alexander Graham Bell, who was granted a contentious patent.

Meucci died on October 18, 1889, poor and disheartened, having never been able to persuade the US courts to agree with him. The US House of Representatives finally acknowledged his legacy more than a century later.

1. Meucci had to drop out of school 

Antonio Meucci. Photo by Francesco Giovanni Cantagalli. Wikimedia Commons

Antonio Meucci was born in Florence, Italy on April 13, 1808. He was the oldest of nine siblings. Domenica Pepi and Amatis Meucci were his parents. Antonio was a mechanical and chemical engineering student in

Florence’s Academy of Fine Arts due to financial constraints, he had to leave after two years. His interest in education and science, on the other hand, did not fade. He worked odd jobs and completed correspondence courses to further his education.

2. Meucci landed a job at the world’s greatest theatre then

The young Antonio Meucci was able to put his engineering knowledge to use as a stage technician at the Pergola Theatre, where he met the love of his life, costume designer Ester Mochi.

On the Florentine stage, Meucci was already demonstrating his inventive side, devising a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and the control room, similar to those used in ships to communicate between different rooms.

However, his involvement in political movements landed him in jail for a few months, and upon his release, he decided to immigrate to Cuba with Ester, who was now his wife. The Tacón Theatre in Havana, where Meucci worked as chief engineer and his wife as costume director, welcomed the couple.

These were happy years in which the inventor let his imagination run wild and created new devices, including a water purification system. He even dabbled in electro medicine, using electrical impulses to treat the pain of a migraine sufferer by placing a small electrode over his mouth.

In 1849, he created the first prototype of the telephone, which would become his great obsession.

3. Meucci devised the telettrofono 

Telettrofono. Photo by Meucci Antonio. Wikimedia Commons

After living in Havana for fifteen years, the couple immigrated to the United States in 1850 and settled on Staten Island (New York). Meucci used his savings from his time in Cuba to open a candle factory, where he employed Italian liberation hero Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Ester began to experience health issues at the time and was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic disease that confined her to her room. Meucci invented the telettrofono, a type of electromagnetic telephone, in 1856 to communicate with her from his laboratory on the ground floor of the house.

He went on to create dozens of new electromagnetic models in which speech was transmitted via vibrating electric currents. To increase the resonance, the original paper cones were replaced with tin cylinders that used thin membranes fixed in copper.

To demonstrate that his devices worked, and because he was having difficulty being understood in New York, he began looking for funding in Italy, but he never received it. The candle factory went bankrupt, and the Meucci house—now the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum—was auctioned off after several legal battles with tax collectors. The new owner allowed them to stay, but it was a difficult blow for the couple.

4. Meucci was a victim of a ship explosion

A ship exploding. Photo by OpenClipart-Vectors. Pixabay

More than 200 people boarded the Staten Island ferryboat Westfield at South Ferry in Manhattan on a warm summer day in July 1871.  Many of them walked through to the ship’s bow to take in the scenery and catch a cool breeze on their way to Staten Island.

Just as the ship was about to leave its slip, the ship’s boiler exploded beneath their feet, ripping a hole through the ship’s wooden frame. The horrific destruction and severity of the injuries that killed more than 125 passengers and injured dozens more created a scene.

Among the injured passengers was Antonio Meucci. Meucci was severely burned in the Westfield explosion.

5. His wife sold his drawings and devices to a second-hand dealer

Antonio Meucci. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Ester sold the telettrofono designs and models to a pawnshop to pay for his medical bills after being burned on the ship. She sold them for $6 in order to alleviate the couple’s dire financial situation. But when Meucci went to retrieve them, they had already been resold.

6. Meucci formed a Telettrofono Company

Telettrofono. Photo by Meucci Antonio. Wikimedia Commons

The engineer formed a partnership with three other Italians to form the Telettrofono Company. His partners warned him about the dangers of not patenting his invention, but Meucci could only afford something preliminary—a temporary legal notice called a patent caveat, which cost twenty dollars—that had to be renewed every year and only gave a brief description of his telephone.

On December 28, 1871, his lawyer filed a caveat with the US Patent Office, numbered 3335 and titled “Sound Telegraph.” 

7. Meucci was yearning to introduce the telephone to the world

Antonio Meucci. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Meucci was eager to demonstrate the benefits of the telephone to the world. He asked the Vice President of American District Telegraph Co. of New York (Edward B. Grant) to test his invention on the company’s telegraph lines, providing him with a description of the prototype and a copy of the patent caveat. 

Edward B. Grant received a description of his prototype as well as a copy of his caveat. After two years, Meucci went to Grant and requested his documents, but Grant allegedly told him they were lost.

8. Meucci was unable to renew the patent caveat that protected his invention

Meucci’s Telettrofono patent caveat expired on December 28, 1874. Critics argue that Meucci could not afford to file for a patent or renew his caveat because he applied for and was granted full patents in 1872, 1873, 1875, and 1876 for $35 each, plus a $10 patent caveat, for inventions unrelated to the telephone. 

9. Meucci’s patent could not have been issued to Bell if he had paid for the caveat fee

The United States House of Representatives passed “United States HRes. 269 on Antonio Meucci” in 2002, stating in its preamble that “if Meucci had been able to pay the ten dollar fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell.” This resolution, however, did not annul or modify any of Bell’s telephone patents, nor did it explicitly state that Meucci is the true inventor of the telephone. It simply gave Meucci credit for inventing the telephone, which he had previously been denied in the United States.

10. Meucci’s invention was named one of the top eight telephone inventions

In 1976, the Smithsonian Institute listed Meucci’s invention as one of the eight most important telephone inventions. The United States House of Representatives passed Resolution 269 on Antonio Meucci in 2002. It was mentioned that his life and achievements be recognized, as well as his role in the invention of the telephone.

In 2003, the painter ‘Nestore Corradi’ painted Meucci’s ideas, and the Italian Post & Telegraph Society used this image on a stamp.