5 Cases of Inventions and Discoveries Contested Among Scientists Because They Were Made Simultaneously

The inventions disputed between two or more inventors are numerous. Progress, in fact, proceeds gradually and the efforts of several individuals are often necessary to obtain certain scientific and technological results. Among the discoveries which have caused the most heated disputes include the Telegraphthe radioThe telephone and the lamp. Other discoveries, although made independently by different groups of scientists, have not caused disputes, as in the case of fission of the atomic nucleusIn this article we understand how it is possible that certain discoveries occur more or less simultaneously and we summarize five famous cases of disputed inventions.

5 DISPUTED INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES
  • 11. The telegraph
  • 22. The radio
  • 33. The telephone
  • 44. The light bulb
  • 55. The fission of the atomic nucleus
  • 6Why do disputed inventions exist?

1. The telegraph

It is always said that the telegraph was invented by Samuel Morse in 1837. In fact, at the same time as Morse, several inventors built an instrument of the same type and were able to send electrical impulses through wires. Among them were the Englishmen William F. Cooke, Charles Wheatstone and Edward Davy, as well as the German Carl August von Steinheil.

A telegraph

In 1853, after several legal disputes, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the inventor of the telegraph could not be determined with certainty, because experiments had been simultaneous. Morse, however, had two great merits: he invented the most efficient code for communication and was able to transmit signals over great distances.

2. The radio

The dispute over the invention of the radio is one of the most well-known. The main protagonists were the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, the Serbian/American Nikola Tesla, the Russian Alexander Popov and the Englishman Oliver Lodge, who between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century experimented with systems for transmitting signals through radio waves. The paternity of the radio provoked several cases in courtThe last sentence, issued in the United States in 1943 (when all the protagonists were dead), maintains that the paternity of the invention belongs to Tesla.

A Marconi magnetic detector from 1902 (credits: Alessandro Nassiri)

It should be noted, however, that the radio of the early twentieth century was very different from the current one, because it could only transmit signals in Morse code in one-to-one communication. It lacked both the possibility of transmit the voiceboth the circular broadcasting (in which the signals from a broadcasting station are received by a large number of receiving devices, as today). For radio to be perfected, other inventions were needed, such as the triode to amplify the signal, first built in 1907 by the American Lee De Forest. It was not until the 1920s that the radio took on a form similar to the current one. This was possible thanks to the work of numerous inventors.

3. The telephone

The invention of the telephone is disputed between the Italian Antonio Meucci, the Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell and other inventors, all engaged in the construction of a “speaking telegraph”, that is, a device capable of transmitting voices through electrical wires instead of electrical impulses. Between the 1860s and 1870s, several inventors achieved this result.

An antique telephone (credits Information of New Orleans)
An antique telephone (credits: Infrogmation of New Orleans)

The first was probably the German Samuel Reisfollowed by Meucci, who in 1871 filed a provisional patent in the United States. The inventor, however, did not have the money to transform it into a definitive patent and in 1874 he was forced to let it expire. Bell filed his patent in 1876, a few hours before another American did so, Elisha Gray. The latter filed a lawsuit against Bell, but was defeated. In essence, the telephone was also born thanks to the experiments of various inventors.

4. The light bulb

We have all heard that the light bulb was invented in the 1870s by Thomas Edison. The issue, however, is more complex. Already at the beginning of the century the first models of light bulbs powered by electricity were developed and in the following decades many inventors studied ways to make them more efficient. Edison had the merit of perfect the light bulbbut in the same period a British chemist Joseph W. Swan, obtained the same results.

Edison’s light bulb

The two inventors faced off in court, but later reached an agreement to jointly market the invention. In the United States, other inventors also sued Edison, claiming that his patent was not original.

5. The fission of the atomic nucleus

In the first decades of the twentieth century, nuclear physics made enormous progress, thanks to which it was possible to obtain a result that was unthinkable until a few years before: splitting the nucleus of the atom. The first fission of the uranium nucleus was achieved in Rome by the “boys of via Panisperna”, the group of young physicists gathered around Enrico Fermi, in 1934.

The boys of via Panisperna
The boys of via Panisperna

However, the group did not notice the result. The first “conscious” fission It was made in 1938 by two German physicists, Eight Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. In this case, the discovery did not cause disputes among scientists, but it started a much more dangerous race: several countries, including the United States, with the Manhattan Project, and Nazi Germany, moved to use nuclear fission to build an atomic bomb.

Why do disputed inventions exist?

Scientific discoveries and technological innovations are not only the fruit of the genius of single individuals, but often derive from a slow and steady progressin which the scientific community as a whole participates. Furthermore, for a new invention to be realized, it is necessary that there exist certain prerequisites; when the prerequisites are in place, it is common for several individuals to begin working on the same project. For example, for the invention of the radio, knowledge of electromagnetic radiation was essential; after it was discovered, several scientists began working on how to utilize it.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, first scientist to produce radio waves with electricity

When several individuals work on the same invention, they can develop collaborative or rivalrous relationships. It may also happen that no one knows anything about the others until the invention is patented.

There are, however, other reasons why it is often not possible to attribute inventions and discoveries to a single individual. First of all, discoveries are often the result of collective work of large research groups. Furthermore, many innovations are not invented “in one fell swoop”, but are the result of a progressive technological evolutioninvolving several inventors. An example is the automobile, invented in the nineteenth century in various phases.