Antonio Meucci
From Wikinfo
Antonio 'Santi Giuseppe' Meucci, (born 13 April 1808, died 18 October 1896) was an Italian American inventor, and sometimes credited as the inventor of the telephone. He married Ester Mochi on 7 August 1834 with Esther Meucci.
Biography
He was born in San Frediano near Florence. He studied chemical and mechanical engineering at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and worked thereafter at some various theatres as a stage technician, until 1835 when he accepted a job at Teatro Tacon in Havana, Cuba.
He was claimed to be part of the Italian Liberation Movement and was imprisoned around 1833-1834. The family then emigrated, first to Cuba, then to America.
Though his assets was large at the arrival to America, they was shrinking quite fast. Not only because he was helping countrymen to reach America, but also because of an accident in one of his laboratories. In a short while, his private finances was so scarce, that he had to live on public funds and other fundings from his friends. It has also been told that his wife sold some of his inventions, including the telephone, to raise cash.
He constructed a form of telephone around 1854 as a way to connect his bedroom to his office, since his wife had ache due to rheumatism. Before then he had constructed a kind of pipe-telephone (that transported sound through a pipe) as a way to communicate between the stage and control room at the theatre.
He had no children.
Patents
Besides electric voice transferral, he invented and patented many devices, based on chemical and mechanical processes.
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Antonio Meucci" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci November 25, 2003
