41 Facts About Antonio Meucci

Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy.

Antonio Meucci set up a form of voice-communication link in his Staten Island, New York, home that connected the second-floor bedroom to his laboratory.

Antonio Meucci submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the US Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat.

Antonio Meucci was born at Via dei Serragli 44 in the San Frediano borough of Florence, First French Empire, on 13 April 1808, as the first of nine children to Amatis Antonio Meucci and Domenica Pepi.

Antonio Meucci ceased full-time studies two years later due to insufficient funds, but continued studying part-time after obtaining employment as an assistant gatekeeper and customs official for the Florentine government.

In May 1825, because of the celebrations for the childbirth of Marie Anna of Saxony, wife of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Antonio Meucci conceived a powerful propellant mixture for flares.

Antonio Meucci was arrested and suspected of conspiracy against the Grand Duchy.

Antonio Meucci later became employed at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as a stage technician, assisting Artemio Canovetti.

In 1834 Antonio Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro of Pergola.

Antonio Meucci married costume designer Esterre Mochi, who was employed in the same theatre, on 7 August 1834.

Antonio Meucci was asked by a friend's doctors to work on Franz Anton Mesmer's therapy system on patients with rheumatism.

Antonio Meucci invested the substantial capital he had earned in Cuba into a tallow candle factory employing several Italian exiles.

For two years Antonio Meucci hosted friends at his cottage, including General Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Colonel Paolo Bovi Campeggi, who arrived in New York two months after Antonio Meucci.

Antonio Meucci studied the principles of electromagnetic voice transmission for many years and was able to transmit his voice through wires in 1856.

Antonio Meucci installed a telephone-like device within his house in order to communicate with his wife, who was ill at the time.

Some of Antonio Meucci's notes written in 1857 describe the basic principle of electromagnetic voice transmission or in other words, the telephone:.

Antonio Meucci devised an electromagnetic telephone as a way of connecting his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus being able to communicate with his wife.

Between 1856 and 1870, Antonio Meucci developed more than 30 different kinds of telephones on the basis of this prototype.

Antonio Meucci's drawing was used to accompany the stamp in a commemorative publication of the Italian Postal and Telegraph Society.

Antonio Meucci intended to develop his prototype but did not have the financial means to keep his company afloat in order to finance his invention.

Antonio Meucci repeatedly focused on insulating the electrical conductor and even insulating the people communicating, but does not explain why this would be desirable.

Antonio Meucci asked him for permission to test his apparatus on the company's telegraph lines.

Antonio Meucci gave Grant a description of his prototype and a copy of his caveat.

Around 1873, a man named Bill Carroll from Boston, who had news about Antonio Meucci's invention, asked him to construct a telephone for divers.

Purportedly too poor to hire a legal team, Antonio Meucci was represented only by lawyer Joe Melli, an orphan whom Antonio Meucci treated as his own son.

The Havana experiments were briefly mentioned in a letter by Antonio Meucci, published by Il Commercio di Genova of 1 December 1865 and by L'Eco d'Italia of 21 October 1865.

At trial, Meucci said William E Rider himself, one of the owners, had given him a copy of the memorandum book in 1862; however, Meucci was not believed.

In 1886, in the first of three cases in which he was involved, Antonio Meucci took the stand as a witness in the hopes of establishing his invention's priority.

Antonio Meucci became ill in March 1889, and died on 18 October 1889 in Clifton, Staten Island, New York.

The Federazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica has devoted a museum to Antonio Meucci making a chronology of his inventing the telephone and tracing the history of the two trials opposing Antonio Meucci and Bell.

However, some scholars outside Italy do not recognize the claims that Antonio Meucci's device had any bearing on the development of the telephone.

In 1834 Antonio Meucci constructed a kind of acoustic telephone as a way to communicate between the stage and control room at the theatre "Teatro della Pergola" in Florence.

In 1848 Antonio Meucci developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat rheumatism.

Antonio Meucci used to give his patients two conductors linked to 60 Bunsen batteries and ending with a cork.

Antonio Meucci kept two conductors linked to the same Bunsen batteries.

Antonio Meucci used to sit in his laboratory, while the Bunsen batteries were placed in a second room and his patients in a third room.

In 1849 while providing a treatment to a patient with a 114V electrical discharge, in his laboratory Antonio Meucci is claimed to have heard his patient's scream through the piece of copper wire that was between them, from the conductors he was keeping near his ear.

In 1856, Antonio Meucci reportedly constructed the first electromagnetic telephone, made of an electromagnet with a nucleus in the shape of a horseshoe bat, a diaphragm of animal skin, stiffened with potassium dichromate and a metal disk stuck in the middle.

Antonio Meucci purportedly constructed it to connect his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus communicate with his invalid wife.

Antonio Meucci constructed a simple calling system with a telegraphic manipulator that short-circuited the instrument of the calling person to make a succession of impulses that were louder than normal conversation.

In 1864, Antonio Meucci claimed to have made what he felt was his best device, using an iron diaphragm with optimized thickness and tightly clamped along its rim.