CHENNAI: I f you are reading this on your smartphone, then, pause. Take a second to thank Alexander Graham Bell who invented the first working telephone in 1876. If you’re reading this in the newspaper, then, thank the Egyptians for discovering Papyrus. “Mr Watson, Come here” was the first sentence to be transmitted through a telephone, between Bell and his assistant Watson.
There’s a thin line between inspiration and plagiarism. We live in an era where a creator’s work is vulnerable given that it can so easily be lifted and there’s not a lot the creator can do about it. With the telephone, Graham Bell did, in fact, patent it first, but given how it been over 130 years, it is easy and ignorant to look past the controversial story of how Bell did, in fact, achieve that feat.
Say hello to Elisha Gray, an inventor in the 19th century who supposedly invented the harmonic telegraph (the telephone) before Bell did. The story goes something like this — both Bell and Gray had been experimenting with transmitting sound waves through wires and improving on the telegraph, but it was Gray who made the first breakthrough with his vibrating wire in a water-acid solution.
Bell then ‘stole’ the diagram to this and bribed the patent officer to get his patent registered before Gray. Several litigations followed, but all of them ruled in favour of Bell, that it was a mere coincidence that Bell had the same diagram as Gray.
In a book called The Telephone Gambit, science historian Seth Shulman concludes that Wilber (the patent officer who Bell bribed) was telling the truth and that Bell plagiarised Gray’s idea for the telephone. To be honest, it has been 140 years since the controversy, and finding the truth would be like crying over spilled milk, if the tears being shed are over who spilled the milk.
Plagiarism laws came into existence in America after the people responsible for framing these laws stole them from the British. It’s quite ironical how these laws came into existence but what matters now is that these laws exist.
Given the intricacy of the controversy, it is possible that had Gray won those litigations or had he been patented before Bell, the thin line that separates plagiarism and inspiration that we dare not cross might not be so thin after all.
What if Elisha Gray had received the patent to the telephone before Alexander Graham Bell did? Had Bell been guilty, the then active community of scientists would have shamed Bell, who was respected even before the telephone, and maybe even worked towards making the system of patency a little legit and not just another act of bureaucracy.
Would the world have been a better place had Gray been credited? A ‘Yes’ would make me a delusional idealist, but there are enough stories out there of less deserving people, criminals taking credit for work they haven’t done.
The curious case of Gray and Bell might not have changed the course of history had it panned out differently, but at least there might have been some sort of hope that plagiarism is a crime, both ethical and moral, and no matter how much you mask it with supposed ‘originality’, you are not going to get away with it.
(When he isn’t writing, the creative producer with The Rascalas watches a lot of ‘cat videos’ on YouTube)