Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci ( may-OO-chee, Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo meˈuttʃi]; 13 April 1808 – 18 October 1889) was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy. Meucci is best known for developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone.
Meucci set up a form of voice-communication link in his Staten Island, New York, home that connected the second-floor bedroom to his laboratory. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound by undulatory electric current. Despite the longstanding general crediting of Bell with the accomplishment, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities supported celebrations of Meucci's 200th birthday in 2008 using the title "Inventore del telefono" (Inventor of the telephone). The U.S. House of Representatives in a resolution in 2002 also acknowledged Meucci's work in the invention of the telephone, although the U.S. Senate did not join the resolution and the interpretation of the resolution is disputed.
Meucci was born at Via dei Serragli 44 in the San Frediano borough of Florence, then part of the First French Empire (now in the Italian Republic), on 13 April 1808, as the first of nine children to Amatis Meucci and Domenica Pepi. Amatis was at times a government clerk and a member of the local police, and Domenica was principally a homemaker. Four of Meucci's siblings did not survive childhood.
In November 1821, at the age of 13, he was admitted to Florence Academy of Fine Arts as its youngest student, where he studied chemical and mechanical engineering. He ceased full-time studies two years later due to insufficient funds, but continued studying part-time after obtaining employment as an assistant gatekeeper and customs official for the Florentine government.
In May 1825, because of the celebrations for the childbirth of Princess Maria Anna of Saxony, wife of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Meucci conceived a powerful propellant mixture for flares. The fireworks went out of his control, causing damages and injuries in the celebration's square. Meucci was arrested and suspected of conspiracy against the Grand Duchy.
Meucci later became employed at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as a stage technician, assisting Artemio Canovetti.
In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro of Pergola. This telephone was constructed on the principles of pipe-telephones used on ships and still functions. He married costume designer Esterre Mochi, who was employed in the same theatre, on 7 August 1834.
In October 1835, Meucci and his wife emigrated to Cuba, then a Spanish province, where Meucci accepted a job at what was then called the Teatro Tacón in Havana (at the time, the greatest theater in the Americas). In Havana he constructed a system for water purification and reconstructed the Gran Teatro.
In 1848 his contract with the governor expired. Meucci was asked by a friend's doctors to work on Franz Anton Mesmer's therapy system on patients with rheumatism. In 1849, he developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat illness and subsequently experimentally developed a device through which one could hear inarticulate human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (talking telegraph).
In 1850, the third renewal of Meucci's contract with Don Francisco Martí y Torrens expired, and his friendship with General Giuseppe Garibaldi made him a suspect citizen in Cuba. On the other hand, the fame reached by Samuel F. B. Morse in the United States encouraged Meucci to make his living through inventions.
On 13 April 1850, Meucci and his wife emigrated to the United States, taking with them approximately 26,000 pesos fuertes in savings (approximately $500,000 in 2010 dollars), and settled in the Clifton area of Staten Island, New York, New York.
The Meuccis would live there for the remainder of their lives. On Staten Island he helped several countrymen committed to the Italian unification movement and who had escaped political persecution. Meucci invested the substantial capital he had earned in Cuba into a tallow candle factory (the first of its kind in the Americas) employing several Italian exiles. For two years Meucci hosted friends at his cottage, including General Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Colonel Paolo Bovi Campeggi, who arrived in New York two months after Meucci. They worked in Meucci's factory.
In 1854, Meucci's wife Esterre became an invalid due to rheumatoid arthritis. Meucci continued his experiments.
Meucci studied the principles of electromagnetic voice transmission for many years and was able to transmit his voice through wires in 1856. He installed a telephone-like device within his house in order to communicate with his wife, who was ill at the time. Some of Meucci's notes written in 1857 describe the basic principle of electromagnetic voice transmission or in other words, the telephone:
Consiste in un diaframma vibrante e in un magnete elettrizzato da un filo a spirale che lo avvolge. Vibrando, il diaframma altera la corrente del magnete. Queste alterazioni di corrente, trasmesse all'altro capo del filo, imprimono analoghe vibrazioni al diaframma ricevente e riproducono la parola.
It consists of a vibrating diaphragm and a magnet electrified by a spiral wire that wraps around it. The vibrating diaphragm alters the current of the magnet. These alterations of current, transmitted to the other end of the wire, create analogous vibrations of the receiving diaphragm and reproduce the word.
Meucci devised an electromagnetic telephone as a way of connecting his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus being able to communicate with his wife. Between 1856 and 1870, Meucci developed more than 30 different kinds of telephones on the basis of this prototype.
A postage stamp was produced in Italy in 2003 that featured a portrait of Meucci. Around 1858, artist Nestore Corradi sketched Meucci's communication concept. His drawing was used to accompany the stamp in a commemorative publication of the Italian Postal and Telegraph Society.