There are more questionable links between Alexander Graham Bell (AGB) and the Smithsonian Institution.
Alexander Graham Bell and James Henry, the director of the Smithsonian Institution and fellow scientist, had the close friendship. James Henry was the ONE, who told Alexander Graham Bell to "GET IT!.
Bell admitted that he did not have the necessary knowledge of making the working model of telephone before filing the patent claim. AGB told his father-in-law (Hubbard)'s own patent attorney, Anthony Pollok that he doesn't have the equipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the ability to create a working model of his ideas.
The U.S. Patent Office examiner, Zenas Fisk Wiber, later stated in a sworn affidavit that he was an alcoholic. who had much in debt to AGB's lawyer, Marcellus Bailey with whom he fought in the American Civil War. Wiber claimed that he showed Gray's patent to Bailey before AGB's official patent claim filing.
Bell admitted that he learned some of technical details from letter correspondences with Gray before filing the patent. He usually took great pains for locking up his notebooks and lab equipments was widely known at that time. AGB also submitted the diagram of workable telephone suspiciously similar to that in Gray's patent in his patent claim.
AGB's politically and socially powerful connected father-in-law, Mr. Hubbard and other financial investors were pretty much behind AGB's patent claims to reap financially from Gray's patent of workable telephone.
Alexander Graham Bell did not file any counter suit action against Gray for libel suits. Why??
The U.S. Attorney General suddenly dropped the lawsuit against Alexander Graham Bell for "fraud and misrepresentation" based on no merits. Political pressures from AGB's father-in-law, Hubbard??
Anthony Meucci claimed to have the first working model of telephone in Italy in 1834. The U.S. House of Representatives done the official investigation whether Meucci really invented the working telephone. They reached the 2002 conclusion that Meucci did invent the telephone first before everyone.
AGB instructed his patent attorney (Hubbard's) to file the patent claim only in the U.S. after they got words from Britain's patent office turning down AGB's patent filing. According to Britain's own policy of issuing patent claims based on discoveries, not previously patented elsewhere.
Queen Victoria of Englad lent credibility and universal acceptance to AGB's claims of telephone invention after had a private audience with Alexander Graham Bell. Much connections between AGB and the Smithsonian Institution was the British subject, James Smithsonian, the founder of the present Smithsonian Institution within Queen Victoria's approval, British himself. AGB also was a British subject due to his Wales native status.
Pretty competition for the national pride between the Victorian England and Italy was much evident, Queen Victoria somewhat ended the ongoing disputes whether Alexander Graham Bell really invented the workable telephone. The scientific circles within Victorian England was pretty clannish and protective and supportive of Alexander Graham Bell's quest for claim on the invention of telephone in name of national pride and superiority.
More reasons for us, deaf people to demand that the Smithsonian Institution to do the permanent exhibition on the horrors of Alexander Graham Bell's legacy toward deaf people as a counteroffensive balance to the American History Museum's wrong impression of Alexander Graham Bell as a lifelong advocate of the deaf and inventor of telephone.
The American History National Museum done such permanent and special exhibits like the repressive Jim Crow segregation and the unfortunate interment of Japanese American citizens in the past.
Moreover, Alexander Graham Bell's own wordings, lifetime beliefs and actions created the systematic discrimination and human sufferings from his own word - "a defective variety of the human race" led to many U.S. states and Nazi Germany's eugenics laws.
Alexander Graham Bell must be widely discredited as a lifelong advocate of the deaf and inventor of telephone within the Smithsonian Institution's correction of museum display of AGB.
The Smithsonian Institution recently had the extreme pains of removing the stuffed blue whale from the Natural History Museum due to the erroneous display of anatomically position of whale for more than 50 years. It finally replace the correct anatomically positioned whale last spring 2008.
Let's do the vigorous campaign to request that the Smithsonian Institution to make the real corrections on Alexander Graham Bell, then provide the major exhibition display of the rich cultural and linguistic and social history of Deaf America and its other deaf citizenry around the world.
ASlize yours,
Robert L. Mason
Monday, January 5, 2009
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