Pie in the face for ‘inventor pioneers’
WHO WERE REAL GROUND-BREAKING GENIUSES?
TELEPHONE: Bell got a US patent in 1876 and made a famous crackly call to his assistant with the words: “Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
In fact, American Elisha Gray had actually delivered his patent application for a similar device on the same day as Bell but mysteriously missed out.
And Italian inventor Antonio Meucci demonstrated electromagnetic transmission of his voice way back in 1856, but didn’t have the cash to develop it.
LIGHTBULB: American genius Thomas Edison, known for his work on the phonograph and movie camera, is also credited for coming up with the incandescent lightbulb in 1879.
But he was really the first to make a commercially viable device.
British scientist Joseph Swan had been the first to come up with the key carbon filament just months before and would later go into business with Edison.
And, before him, in 1802, another British boffin, Humphry Davy, had first demonstrated a crude electric light.
AEROPLANE: On December 17, 1903, American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright took off in North Carolina, inset, to make what is often regarded as the first powered, controlled, heavier-than-air flight in a biplane. They flew 120ft at a height of 10ft over 12 seconds.
But it has since been claimed witnesses saw reclusive New Zealand farmer Richard Pearse fly for the same length of time months earlier than the Wrights.
And he’s reported to have done it in a monoplane, much closer to modern day aircraft.
RADIO: Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi is often cited as inventor of the radio having demonstrated wireless telegraphy in the 1890s. He gained a radio patent in 1904.
But much of the groundwork had been done by American inventor Nikola Tesla, inset, whose coil was essential to transmitting radio waves.
He missed out on demonstrating his own device when his lab burnt down.
TELEVISION: Ask most people who invented TV and they say John Logie Baird. The Scot did demonstrate the first working one in 1926. But his set was mechanical and made from an old tea chest. By then Russianborn US immigrant Vladimir Zworykin had been experimenting with electrical TV sets and pioneered the use of cathode ray tubes in ones more like those used today.