Free The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret (v5) by Seth Shulman Page B

wouldn’t Gray have objected once the Bell team’s actions came to light? I lacked answers, but I knew one thing for sure: the timing of Bell’s and Gray’s telephone claims is normally portrayed as mere coincidence, but Hubbard’s apparent rush to file—behind Bell’s back, no less—strongly suggests otherwise.

CLEAR RECEPTION
     
     
    B Y LATE FALL OF 2004, I had amassed a growing number of questions about the invention of the telephone. I had listed them in my handwritten notebook, typed them into my laptop computer, and written them on notecards. My office came with a white board—the kind with erasable Magic Markers—and one day, on a whim, I used it to jot down some of my questions in the hope that, by looking at them together in one place, I could develop a more coherent research strategy:
     
Why didn’t the U.S. Patent Office require Bell to submit a working model of his invention?
Why didn’t the truth about Bell’s apparent plagiarism come out in years of bitter court battles?
Why didn’t Elisha Gray pursue his claim?
     
    Before I knew it, I had nearly filled the entire board with questions like these when David Cahan, my colleague from the next office, knocked on my door.
    “You busy?” he asked, glancing quizzically at the scribbling on my white board.
    “No, no. Come in.”
    Cahan had come bearing a gift. He handed me a sheet of paper.
    “I have no idea whether this is of interest,” he began, “but I came across evidence that Bell and Helmholtz actually did meet face to face when Helmholtz visited the U.S. late in his life. I thought you might want to see it.”
    It was a photocopy of a newspaper article he had unearthed from the New York Daily Tribune dated October 4, 1893. According to the report, Bell had come immediately from Nova Scotia upon receiving word that Helmholtz, who had so inspired his work on the telephone, was in America. Ironically enough, the aged Helmholtz had decided to make the trip primarily to attend an International Electrical Congress organized and led by Elisha Gray. But, as the article reported, Bell did manage to meet his mentor in New York. The two men had lunch, after which Bell attended a lecture by Helmholtz and a reception held in his honor.
    I was touched by Cahan’s gesture of finding a link between his research and mine. I thanked him for thinking of me and he took a seat in the overstuffed chair across from my desk. He told me he was almost done writing a journal article about the impact of Helmholtz’s visit to the United States. I told him I would be interested to read it.
    “Listen,” I said, in an impulsive overture that was doubtless long overdue. “I’m not ready to share this widely yet, but if you have a minute, there is something I’d love to get your advice about.” Shuffling through the papers on my desk, I placed the photocopies of Gray’s caveat and Bell’s version of the liquid transmitter side by side on the corner of my desk and explained how I had happened upon them.
    Cahan listened attentively and scrutinized the copies closely. Then he was silent for a long time.
    “These are very intriguing documents,” he said. “If the facts are just as you say, it would seem that you really could have something here.” He paused again. “Of course, there is more I would want to know. The key thing that comes to my mind is the danger of Whiggism. Do you know about Whiggism?”
    Seeing the blank look on my face as I struggled to imagine what Tories and Whigs had to do with the invention of the telephone, Cahan proceeded in his soft-spoken and collegial way to offer me a learned thumbnail on historiography—the study of the study of history. “Whiggism,” Cahan said, was the historical pitfall of not seeing things in their own context but rather judging the past by the norms or standards of the present. The term likely derived from the penchant of certain politically allegiant historians in Britain to write history in terms that