Scottish fact of the week: The telephone

The Darvel Telephone Museum at Darvel , East Ayrshire. Picture: Robert Perry

The truth is a bit of a mess, which belies the elegance and simplicity of an innovation that transformed how people communicated with one another. Several inventors began working on prototypical versions of the telephone from the mid-19th century onwards, building devices that could transmit sounds and speech via electrical signals from one point to another.

Alexander Graham Bell is widely credited and recognised as the inventor of the telephone as we know it. The Edinburgh-born Bell, inspired by his work with deaf-mute children, created a device that could transform electricity into sound in 1875; the following year, he was granted a patent for his invention.

An Italian inventor, Antonio Meucci, was developing a telephone (he called his version a “teletrofono”), which he demonstrated in New York 15 years before Bell’s patent. Meucci ultimately failed to be recognised for the invention, chiefly because he couldn’t afford a watertight patent. Luck wasn’t on Meucci’s side either: he brought legal procedings against Bell, but died before action could be brought.

Bell, who had emigrated to the US via a short spell in Canada in 1870, won awards and became a wealthy man following his patent, and continued his research into speech therapy and communication. He died in 1922 in Canada.

•The other inventions of Alexander Graham Bell