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 Baron Kelvin). In August 1876 at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Thomson revealed the telephone to the European public. In describing his visit to the Philadelphia Exhibition, Thomson said, "I heard [through the telephone] passages taken at random from the New York newspapers: 'S.S. Cox Has Arrived' (I failed to make out the S.S. Cox); 'The City of New York', 'Senator Morton', 'The Senate Has Resolved To Print A Thousand Extra Copies', 'The Americans In London Have Resolved To Celebrate The Coming Fourth Of July!' All this my own ears heard spoken to me