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 Company, and the results were covered up by STC's chairman Sir Frank Gill to maintain Bell's reputation. An early voice communicating device was invented around 1854 by Antonio Meucci, who called it a "telettrofono". In 1871 Meucci filed a caveat at the US Patent Office. His caveat describes his invention, but does not mention a diaphragm, electromagnet, conversion of sound into electrical waves, conversion of electrical waves into sound, or other essential features of an electromagnetic telephone. The first American demonstration of Meucci's invention took place in Staten Island, New York in 1854. In 1861, a description of it was