The other unknown bit about Alexander Graham Bell is that it's almost certain he did NOT actually invent the telephone...it seems to be pretty certain that he did, in fact, steal the plans from another inventor, a gentleman named Elisha Gray. There's a lot more to this, but here's a short excerpt from Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy
In the summer of 1874, Gray developed a harmonic telegraph device using vibrating reeds that could transmit musical tones, but not intelligible speech. In December 1874 he demonstrated it to the public at Highland Park First Presbyterian Church. On February 11, 1876, Gray [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray-telephone-notebook.gif" title="File:Gray-telephone-notebook.gif"]included a diagram for a telephone in his notebook[/a]. On February 14, Gray's lawyer [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray-telephone-caveat.gif" title="File:Gray-telephone-caveat.gif"]filed a patent caveat[/a] with a similar diagram.
[/p]The same day, Bell's lawyer filed (hand-delivered to the [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Patent_Office" class="mw-redirect" title="U.S. Patent Office"]U.S. Patent Office[/a]) a patent application on the harmonic telegraph, including its use for transmitting vocal sounds. On February 19, the patent office suspended Bell's application for three months to give Gray time to submit a full patent application with claims, after which the patent office would begin [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_proceedings" class="mw-redirect" title="Interference proceedings"]interference proceedings[/a] to determine whether Bell or Gray were [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_invent" class="mw-redirect" title="First to invent"]first to invent[/a] the claimed subject matter of the telephone.[sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"][a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy#cite_note-2"][span][/span][span][/span][/a][/sup][/p] At the time, the [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USPTO" class="mw-redirect" title="USPTO"]USPTO[/a] required the submission of a working [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_model"]patent model[/a] for the patent application to be accepted, with the acceptance process often taking years, and with interference proceedings often involved public hearings—although the U.S. Congress had abolished the requirement for patent models in 1870.[sup id="cite_ref-SF_3-0" class="reference"][a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy#cite_note-SF-3"][span][/span][span][/span][/a][/sup] However, Bell's lawyers argued strenuously for an exception to be made in their case, likely on the basis of the Congressional amendment to the patent law.[/p] On February 24, 1876, Bell traveled to Washington DC. Nothing was entered in his lab notebook until his return to Boston on March 7. Bell's patent was issued on March 7. On March 8, Bell recorded an experiment in his lab notebook, with a diagram similar to that of Gray's patent caveat (see right). Bell finally got his telephone model to work on March 10, when Bell and his assistant [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._Watson"]Thomas A. Watson[/a] both recorded the famous "Watson, come here" story in their notebooks.[/p]In a letter of March 2, 1877, Bell admitted to Gray that he was aware Gray's caveat "had something to do with the vibration of a wire in water [the variable resistance breakthrough that made the telephone practical] — and therefore conflicted with my patent."[sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"][a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy#cite_note-4"][span][/span][span][/span][/a][/sup] At this time, Gray's caveat was still confidential. In 1879, Bell testified under oath that he discussed "in a general way" Gray's caveat with patent examiner Zenas Fisk Wilber.[a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy#cite_note-5"][span][/span][/a][/p]In a sworn affidavit from April 6, 1886, Wilber admitted that he was an alcoholic who owed money to his longtime friend and Civil War Army companion [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Bailey"]Marcellus Bailey[/a], Bell's lawyer. Wilber says that after he issued the suspension on Bell's patent application, Bailey came to visit. In violation of Patent Office rules, he told Bailey about Gray's caveat and told his superiors that Bell's patent application had arrived first. During Bell's visit to Washington, "Prof. Bell was with me an hour when I showed him the drawing [of Gray's caveat] and explained Gray's methods to him." He says Bell returned at 2pm to give him a hundred-dollar bill.[sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference"][a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy#cite_note-6"][span][/span][span][/span][/a][/sup][/p]
