Telephone "voice", together meaning "distant voice". Credit for the invention of the electric telephone is frequently disputed. As with other influential inventions such as radio, television, the light bulb, and the computer, several inventors pioneered experimental work on "voice transmission over a wire" and improved on each other's ideas. New controversies over the issue still arise from time to time. Charles Bourseul, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited with the invention of the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone by
Invention of the telephone later the Canadian parliament countered with a symbolic motion conferring official recognition for the invention of the telephone to Bell. Champions of Meucci, Manzetti, and Gray have each offered fairly precise tales of a contrivance whereby Bell actively stole the invention of the telephone from their specific inventor. In the 2002 congressional resolution, it was inaccurately noted that Bell worked in a laboratory in which Meucci's materials had been stored, and claimed that Bell must thus have had access to those materials. Manzetti claimed that Bell visited him and examined his device in 1865. And it is alleged that Bell