BOSTON (AP)—A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime—that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray.
In "The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret," journalist Seth Shulman argues that Bell—aided by aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner—got an improper peek at patent documents Gray had filed, and that Bell was erroneously credited with filing first.
Shulman believes the smoking gun is Bell's lab notebook, which was restricted by Bell's family until 1976, then digitized and made widely available in 1999.
The notebook details the false starts Bell encountered as he and assistant Thomas Watson tried transmitting sound electromagnetically over a wire. Then, after a 12-day gap in 1876—when Bell went to Washington to sort out patent questions about his work—he suddenly began trying another kind of voice transmitter. That method was the one that proved successful.
As Bell described that new approach, he sketched a diagram of a person speaking into a device. Gray's patent documents, which describe a similar technique, also feature a very similar diagram.
Shulman's book, due out Jan. 7, recounts other elements that have piqued researchers' suspicions. For instance, Bell's transmitter design appears hastily written in the margin of his patent; Bell was nervous about demonstrating his device with Gray present; Bell resisted testifying in an 1878 lawsuit probing this question; and Bell, as if ashamed, quickly distanced himself from the telephone monopoly bearing his name.
Perhaps the most instructive lesson comes when Shulman explores why historical memory has favored Bell and not Gray—nor German inventor Philipp Reis, who beat them both with 1860s telephones that employed a different principle.
One reason is simply that Bell, not Gray, actually demonstrated a phone that transmitted speech. Gray was focused instead on his era's pressing communications challenge: how to send multiple messages simultaneously over the same telegraph wire. As Gray huffed to his attorney, "I should like to see Bell do that with his apparatus."
译文:
电话的发明--剽窃大师贝尔？！
波士顿（美联社）--一本新书宣称对一项长期受怀疑的科技犯罪掌握了确凿的证据--亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔从一个对手以利沙·格雷手中窃取了电话的概念。
新闻记者赛斯·舒曼在《电话话题：探寻贝尔的秘密》一书中质疑贝尔--在几名气势汹汹的律师和一名浑浑噩噩的专利审查员“协助”下--贝尔偷偷看了格雷提交的专利文档，并且贝尔就此被误认为第一个发明电话的人。
舒曼相信确凿的证据是贝尔实验室的笔记本，直到1976年，它一直藏在贝尔的家人处，在1999年，才被制成电子文档，并广为流传。
贝尔实验室的笔记本上详细记录了贝尔和他的助手托马斯·沃森在用电线传送电磁声一开始遇到的失败。之后在1876年，经过了12天的瓶颈后--当贝尔去华盛顿处理关于他工作上专利的问题时--他突然开始尝试另一种声音的传送器。而正是这种方法取得了成功。
贝尔描述的新方法，他画的草图是一个人对着一个仪器讲话。而格雷德专利文档中也描述了一个相似的技术，同样也有一幅非常相似的草图。
舒曼的这本书于1月7日上市，叙述了其他令研究人员起疑的资料。例如，贝尔的话筒设计看上去是草草的在他专利文档的边缘写上去；格雷在场，贝尔展示他的设备时，就会变得非常紧张；贝尔拒绝在1878年探究该问题的诉讼中作证；并且贝尔，好像是因为羞耻心作祟，很快就离开了冠上自己大名的电话垄断行业。
可能最有意义的教训，当舒曼探究为什么历史上对于该问题都偏向于贝尔，而非格雷--也不是德国发明家菲利普·里斯，他因为电话在19世纪60年代采用不同的原理而对他们都做出抨击。
一个原因是因为贝尔他真正的让电话产生了通话的效果，而非格雷。格雷则关注另一个通信挑战：如何使用同一根电线将多条信息同时传达出去。正如格雷向他的律师说的那样：“我倒要看看贝尔用他的设备怎样才能做成做到这点。”