March 7

Much to my surprise, the question ‘Who invented the telephone?’ remains unanswered almost 150 years after the telephone’s introduction. Not only is it an unanswered question, but there are actually quite a few candidates for its inventor, not merely one or two people, but five contenders. It’s sort of like the lively debate concerning who was the walrus in Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. There are advocates for Antonio Meucci, Johann Philip Reis, Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, and Thomas Edison. However, Bell was granted patent #174,465 for the telephone on the 7th in 1876.