Page 40 - Spring 2007

Fig. 2-3. Electrostatic phone used for trans- mitting and receiving. (New York Public Library)
ing the complex New York business and financial worlds. Alexander Graham Bell was but two years old when Antonio Meucci arrived in the United States in 1850. The Meucci’s settled on Staten Island and bought a house that stands today as the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum on Tompkins Street. Giuseppe Garibaldi, later hero of the Italian Risorgmento came to live with Meucci between campaigns. He encouraged Meucci to employ other exiles to make stearic candles based on Meucci’s original chemical compounds that
predated those of Proctor & Gamble.
When Ester Meucci’s arthritis confined her to her third
floor bedroom, Antonio improved on his Speaking Telegraph (2-3, 2-3x), installing an intercom from there to his laborato- ries near the kitchen and in their yard. Following Galileo’s teaching to “provando e reprovando” (try and try again), he experimented with diaphragms of animal material and of metal, first located above, then below, a metal tongue,2 with wire windings on a tube filled with steel filings or a metal rod, both magnetized with a loadstone. He found them all to “react with the noise of the word,” resulting in successive instru- ments. See Figs. 2-3, 2-3x and 2-4 (1853). In 1852 he contact- ed the manufacturers of Morse telegraph equipment—then in widespread use—to inquire where he could purchase materials and was referred to a “Mr. Chester who lived on Centre Street. In 1854...I...obtained bobbins and other utensils from Mr. Chester...he (Chester) showed me all the things necessary used then in the telegraphic art...my memory was opened to build some new instruments...after
some reflection, I constructed a first instrument.”
The Instrument (1854) used a mag- netized rod, with a diaphragm (see Fig. 2-4) with a strange hole and a metallic tongue which he thought necessary to produce a voice signal. Meucci cited a platinum metal tongue, now known to be a slightly ferromagnetic material when containing a nickel impurity. The sound receiver/transmitter he developed was in essence a reversible variable reluctance transceiver. He varied between using ani-
mal diaphragms with a central metal “valve” and a metallic diaphragm set very close to the magnet. In 1856, he switched to a horseshoe magnet with a helical winding (Fig. 3-1, 1856), then back to a magnetized steel bar powered by a bobbin of wire (Fig. 3-2, 1859).
In 1857–1858, apparently ready to move forward with his invention, he asked New York artist Nestore Corradi to make a drawing from his sketch showing “a man in a sitting position holding in his hands two small apparatuses of con- cave form, attached to electric wires to be used one by the mouth in order to speak into it, the other to be placed to the ear to receive sounds of the human voice, so constituting a speaking telegraph” that he called a telephone.3 In 1860, Meucci wrote an article for publication in L’Eco d’Italia in New York detailing his “Speaking Telegraph.” Meucci asked acquaintance, Enrico Bendelari, who was planning to spend some time in Naples on business, to seek an Italian backer there since Naples already had an extensive telegraph net- work. Meucci either gave Bendelari copies of his L’Eco article, or sent them to him later. By then Garibaldi had “liberated” Naples. The ruling Bourbon regime was failing, and backers who Bendelari approached were reluctant to proceed due to the evolving political situation in that region.
During the 1850’s the Meucci’s obtained ownership of the land adjacent to their cottage, and Antonio became a U.S. citi- zen in 1854. But he then dissipated their savings in poor busi- ness decisions and speculative chemical ventures including a
candle factory and a brewery. Between 1858 and 1862 the Meucci’s land was sold at public auction, but they were permit- ted to live in the cottage indefinitely. In December 1859 he wrote to his dear friend Garibaldi, now on campaign in Italy, “I have reduced myself to working like a ‘garzone’ to $15 to the week, shame for me.”4 Kerosene from Pennsylvania petroleum oil was discovered in 1859 and it diminished the candle business. His 1860 candle patent only brought him the opportunity to work for William Rider (“New York Parafinne Candle Co.”), to
“In 1872, Meucci reproduced a pair of his “teletrofono”
from left over parts and parts he could afford to buy and gave them to Grant, who did not seem to know the merit of these instruments.”
38 Acoustics Today, April 2007
Fig. 2-3x. First electromagnetic phone instrument. (New York Public Library)
Fig. 2-4. Phone used for transmitting and receiving. (New York Public Library)