Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell with Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps to discuss the motion. Many Italian Canadians were upset by the motion due to long held beliefs that Meucci was the telephone's inventor, according to the Italian-language weekly "L'Ora Di Ottawa". The motion was still referred to years after its passage, in reference to Bell's primacy in the invention of the telephone. In an article on author Charlotte Gray's new book "Reluctant Genius", the "Ottawa Citizen" noted "…Bell invented the telephone company… [and] thanks to a 2002 motion, the Parliament of Canada continues to recognize Bell as the [telephone's] inventor". Canadian Parliamentary Motion on
Bell System the United States Department of Justice in 1984, at which time the Bell System ceased to exist. Receiving a U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone on March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, which in 1885 became AT&T. When Bell's original patent expired 15 years later in 1894, the telephone market opened to competition and 6,000 new telephone companies started while the Bell Telephone company took a significant financial downturn. On April 30, 1907, Theodore Newton Vail returned as President of AT&T. Vail believed in the superiority of one national telephone system