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
Necessity is the mother of invention inuentour of all goodnesse", in his book "Toxophilus". In 1608, George Chapman, in his two-part play "The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron", used a very similar phrase: "The great Mother, Of all productions (graue Necessity)". But, the earliest actual usage of the proverb "Necessity is the mother of invention" is sometimes ascribed to Richard Franck, who used it in his book "Northern Memoirs", calculated for the meridian of Scotland (1658). Commonly misattributed due to Benjamin Jowett's popular idiomatic translation (1871) of "Plato's Republic", Book II, 369c as "The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of