The Telephone Gambit by Seth Shulman
April 1st, 2009Title: The Telephone Gambit
Author: Seth Shulman
Publisher: W.W. Norton (2008)
Jennifer at The Literate Housewife asked if I wanted to read and review this book. I assume she figured out my dorkitude and would enjoy a book about the invention of the telephone and patent law. Sadly, she was right.
The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell’s Secret by Seth Shulman is a really interesting look at the argument that Bell was not the first person to invent the telephone…and in fact stole the design from a man named Elisha Gray. You hear these types of stories all the time…usually from crazy people rambling about faked moon landings and the Kennedy Assassination. So I started this book a bit hesitantly. Shulman, a science journalist, started writing the book hesitantly as well…he didn’t believe it either. Spending a year at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT, Shulman found an original document from Bell’s lab notebook. His original plan was to research and write about Thomas Edison AND Alexander Graham Bell…basically doing a compare and contrast on them. But he found himself leaning more towards Bell alone.
In the early stages of his research he found a number of questionable items in Bell’s notebooks. Most notably a complete change of telephone design to a design that matched Gray’s almost exactly. These wholesale changes are rarely made in science as he was not even able to test his original design much. These wholesale changes were also made AFTER he caught a glimpse of Gray’s design. Even the drawings in Bell’s notebook almost identically match Gray’s!! DUM-DUM-DUM!!!!! Obviously the book goes into much more detail than I gave here.
Shulman’s writing style made this book entertaining even though the topic itself could be considered a little boring. He goes back and forth between his time during research and the story itself. It is fun to read. I don’t want to ruin the ending for you…but Alexander Graham Bell stole the design from Elisha Gray and made 10 kajillion dollars from it. Think about it…if it werent for the theivery…you would be writing checks to the Gray Telephone Company instead of Bell!
I liked this book a lot and would recommend it to anyone interested in history or inventions.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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April 1st, 2009 at 11:22 am
This sounds pretty interesting. I never knew Bell was a thief.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:03 am
[...] I reviewed The Telephone Gambit by Seth Shulman. It was a really good read about the history (and controversy) of the invention of [...]