A few years ago the famed inventor of the telephone (and of oralism and eugenics and other things) was struck off the patents registers as being the only true inventor of the telephone. The US Congress had decreed that Alexander Graham Bell was not the telephone’s inventor but rather it was an impoverished Italian – Antonio Meucci. Evidently Bell has exited stage right – any due recognition in terms of any original vocal messaging that is delivered by wire must now be credited to other inventors.
The awfully bad… sorry, the very good news detailed in The Guardian at the start of the 21st Century!
Bell had previously been ahead of the game and despite the huge competition of the time, he was easily able to register his invention as the first ever. In comparison to that, Meucci had little grasp of English and he very unfortunately missed opportunities to register his invention as a patent – this being twenty years before Bell’s patent of 1876. To cap it all, unlike Bell, Meucci wasn’t rich thus he didn’t even have lawyers to help register the first ever use of a telephone. The furthest Meucci got was a caveat:
Having exhausted most of his life’s savings in pursuing his work, Meucci was unable to commercialize his invention, though he demonstrated his invention in 1860 and had a description of it published in New York’s Italian language newspaper. Meucci never learned English well enough to navigate the complex American business community. Meucci was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay his way through the patent application process, and thus had to settle for a caveat, a one year renewable notice of an impending patent, which was first filed on December 28, 1871. (Part of the statement from the US Congress’ resolution of 6th November 2002 decreeing Meucci and not Bell as the inventor of the telephone).
There is also London’s Institute of Technology who states it has records clearly showing Phillip Reis as another early inventor of the telephone. Reis was a scientist and school teacher in Friedrichsdorf, Germany. The Institute of Technology has a number of hand bound editions of a magazine which clearly depict Reiss’ invention and how it worked. These experiments were undertaken during 1860 and 1861.
Basically the only reason Bell was ahead of the game is because of his knowledge, his wealth and his many useful contacts. Alas that fortuitous position enabled Bell to pursue his dream of eliminating the deaf-mute’s existence and in their place the establishment of a deaf people who would pose no threat of any sort to the hearing world’s social hierarchy.
Bell’s 1884 tome on the eradication of the deaf-mute/sign language – and the best known of his eugenicist writings.
If one has seen the recent anger and numerous demonstrations against the Labour Government in terms of benefit cuts for the disabled and the deaf – the anger is because the Labour party, instead of supporting them, has instead reneged on its pre-election promises and sought to make the disabled the primary victims for substantial cuts to benefits – and a large amount of rhetoric has revolved around a view that the disabled are essentially lazy and therefore undeserving of support. Some of the leading campaigners who led the fight against the Labour party’s policies have also said there is never any sort of good time to bash or criticise disability or assume others have a better knowledge of disability than those who are actually disabled.
And that is because anyone can become disabled, or deaf, or blind at any time. And when they do, it certainly is an eye opener because, well, its no easy thing for a start and its only then the struggles begin to be properly understood.
In those very terms, when it comes to oralism and the great speech advocates such as Bell, evidently they have no inkling of what it is like to be Deaf. What it means is they shouldn’t even have any opposition to any means which improves the Deaf person’s life greatly – rather than waste copious amounts of time trying to diminish the Deaf’s rights and integrity by way of compulsory conversion to an alien linguistics. Oralism certainly sent a lot of Deaf people down the drain yet it continues to be a thing many advocates seem to think is worth pursuing. In any event its almost invariably the hearing who are promoting this dubious and wasted crusade.
Bell in wheelchair. Part of image from UCL Blogs.
Anyway the great guy himself in his later years sometimes had to be taken around in an old style wheelchair. The person who was his assistant was Black and that was one of a few things, that besides the deaf-mute or sign language, Bell had not greatly approved of. In a sense it was slavery per se. Besides throwing the Deaf community into a hot cauldron of oralism from which relatively few escaped unsinged – Bell also promoted a notion of American society striving to not marrying what he had termed undesirables. This was, according to Bell, a means of avoiding impurity. It was no doubt a clear indication racial superiority was at the forefront of his theories. Both of these were a consist of his desire for the establishment of a race of people whom Bell described as ‘normals.’
Compared to Bell’s crusades against the Deaf, his racial views are lesser known but certainly exist in various publications.
Its not possible to say whether the negative views Bell held were in any way responsible for the predicament Bell faced in the last years of his life when he had come to rely upon those he had thought as being of a lesser desirability. In a sense it would also be wrong to say Bell had truly deserved it because the world works in ways that are not well known. One will of course wonder whether there had been some higher hand at work however. That might be possible of course, but again its difficult to say because some people who have done a great amount of good – and who had sadly become ill during the course of their endeavours – what this means in totality is it is very difficult to see why they had deserved such a fate.
After all it might simply have been one of those things. Its probably the chaos the world creates. There is so much uncertainty and so much suffering. Something is created or caused, or some dodgy equilibrium or other is begun and there is fall-out and there is also biteback.
In spite of all that, there is every evidence that Bell had certainly punched down the Deaf community – and he undoubtedly felt safe behind a world wide army of oral advocates. Far lesser known were his racist ideas – of which very few works are currently in the public domain. Yet again Bell no doubt felt safe with an army of eugenics ready to back his ideals. He warned that America was facing a ‘race suicide.’ That is, the degradation of human stock by others whom Bell viewed as inferior. Bell was also the Chairman of the Board of Scientific Directors to the Eugenics Record Office which was established in the United States.
Perhaps within the slipstream that had developed as a result of Bell’s wishes for an oral and a racial supremacy, it might be possible fate had somehow found a means of dealing its hand upon Bell in a different way – and that would perhaps explain his eventual incapacity and the need to rely on others once seen as being the antithesis of his theories. One never knows.
In spite of all the negatives this discredited man has brought to the world, there’s no doubt Bell continues to be hailed as one of the greatest inventors. Evidently his advocates would rather that the other and far more controversial stuff was conveniently forgotten and Bell instead retained his position as one of the world’s leading inventors. In retrospect, this cannot be right in any way or form, and it most certainly cannot be the case not even in the 21st Century. That is because Bell’s ideals must be remembered for what they were and the deleterious effects they had upon many.
As is so often said, history must not be forgotten.
Both of Bell’s works mentioned in this article can be found at the Internet Archive:
Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race (1884).
