History of the telephone patents, however, were commercially decisive, because they dominated telephone technology and were upheld by court decisions in the United States. The modern telephone is the result of work of many people. Alexander Graham Bell was, however, the first to patent the telephone, as an "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically". Bell has most often been credited as the inventor of the first practical telephone. However, in Germany Johann Philipp Reis is seen as a leading telephone pioneer who stopped only just short of a successful device, and as well the Italian-American inventor and businessman Antonio Meucci has been
Invention of the telephone Bell set up a telephone using telegraph lines at Robert White's Boot and Shoe Store at 90 Grand River Street North in Paris via its Dominion Telegraph Co. office on Colborne Street. The normal telegraph line between Paris and Brantford was not quite 13 km (8 miles) long, but the connection was extended a further 93 km (58 miles) to Toronto to allow the use of a battery in its telegraph office. "Scientific American" described the three test calls in their September 9, 1876, article, "The Human Voice Transmitted by Telegraph". Historian Thomas Costain referred to the calls as "the