Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell

Updated on Oct 01, 2024

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The first session of Canada's 37th Parliament unanimously passed a Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell on June 21, 2002, to affirm that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone.

The symbolic motion was a response to the 107th United States Congress' earlier resolution (HRes 269) of June 11, 2002, which recognized the contributions of Antonio Meucci. Due to a misleading press release issued by U.S. Congressman Vito Fossella, this was interpreted by some as establishing priority for the invention of the telephone to Meucci. The House of Representatives' Resolution and the Parliamentary Motion which followed were both opinions and did not carry any legal weight. The resolution also did not annul or modify any of Bell's patents for the telephone.

During the 108th Congress another almost identical resolution, SRes 223 was introduced in the United States Senate, but which was then sent to a committee where it died, unenacted.

The Canadian Parliamentary Motion and Resolution HRes 269 were both widely reported by various news media at the time of their proclamations. Resolution HRes 269 is still cited by Meucci advocates as proof that he has been acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone. The U.S. resolution has equally been criticized for its factual errors, inaccuracies, biases and distortions.

History

The Canadian legislative motion was a quick "tit-for-tat" response to the U.S. House of Representatives' HRes 269, passed 10 days earlier by only a single Congressional body to recognize the "...work in the invention of the telephone" made by Antonio Meucci”, but also impugning the character of Alexander Graham Bell. The perceived attack on Bell’s primacy and character did not sit well with many Canadians and their parliamentarians, in a country where the inventor-scientist is often viewed as a native son. Only days after the U.S. resolution was announced, Major Chris Friel of Brantford, Ontario near the site where Bell invented the telephone's theoretical concept, dismissed the U.S. resolution out of hand, stating “"Absolutely, the credit [for the phone] remains with [Bell]…”.

Responding to the House of Representative's assault on Bell, Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps issued a comment to the Canadian news media: "I'm sure we can come in with our own legislation". After a number of in camera consultations over the next several days with members of the Conservatives, the New Democratic Party, and the Bloc Québécois in Canada’s federal parliament, Liberal M.P. Bob Speller (Haldimand—Norfolk—Brant) rose in the House on June 21, requesting that the Deputy Prime Minister advise the U.S. House of Representatives it had erred, by asking: "I am wondering if the Minister will take the time to inform the U.S. Congress that indeed, yes, Virginia, Alexander Graham Bell did invent the telephone?"

After the House's formal Question Period, the Deputy Prime Minister tabled the motion in the Commons affirming Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone. The Canadian motion made no derogatory comments of Antonio Meucci, unlike the U.S. resolution’s treatment of Bell. Copps’ motion asserting Bell’s primacy of invention was met with the unanimous approval of all four political parties, and a copy of the legislative motion was directed to the U.S. Congress.

Later, addressing the media, Deputy Prime Minister Copps commented on the House motion by stating that Bell was a "visionary" and "...an inspiring example of a Canadian inventor who, by his ingenuity and his perseverance contributed to the advancement of knowledge and the progress of humanity."

Full text of the Parliament of Canada motion on Bell

As directly quoted in Hansard, the official Canadian parliamentary record:

Hon. Sheila Copps (Minister of Canadian Heritage, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the House for unanimous consent on the following motion, which has been discussed with all parties, regarding Alexander Graham Bell. I move [that]:

This House affirms that Alexander Graham Bell of Brantford, Ontario and Baddeck, Nova Scotia is the inventor of the telephone.

The Speaker: Does the hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage have the unanimous consent of the House to propose this motion?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

[continuing....]

Hon. Sheila Copps: Mr. Speaker, might I suggest that we forward a copy of this to the congress in the United States so they get their facts straight?

Full text of the U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 269

As directly quoted in HRes 269 (Ver. EH), and recorded by the US GPO (table and paragraph numbering added for referencing purposes):

Critical views on the Motion, Resolution and the Patent Caveat

In 2003, the distinguished Italian telecommunications inventor and Meucci book author Professor Basilio Catania (former CEO at CSELT), interviewed on the parliamentary Bell motion and the congressional Meucci resolution, first commented on Bell's record as an inventor and scientist:

"I am not the kind of man who can make statements without proofs. I did not do it with Meucci and I do not see why I should do it with Bell... ...I can, however, state that the theoretical description of the electrical transmission of speech in Bell's first patent is nearly perfect and appears to me as the first clear treatise ever written."

Professor Catania later went on to note the straightforwardness of the follow-up parliamentary motion compared to the seaminess of the initial congressional resolution:

"The Canadian reaction to an unfortunate passage in Resolution No. 269 of the US House of Representatives is quite understandable. In my opinion the insinuation against the morality and scientific stature of Alexander Graham Bell, in the above resolution, was both unnecessary and unproven, though there had been suspicions that Bell might have fished something from Meucci's ideas. Personally, I would have refrained from stating anything that is not fully proven. I do, however, appreciate that, in the Canadian motion pro Bell, nothing [derogatory] is said against Antonio Meucci... "

However, intellectual property law author R.B. Rockman was more critical in his view of HRes 269. After first reviewing the essential details of American Bell Telephone Company v. Globe Telephone Company, Antonio Meucci, et al. (31 Fed 728 (SDNY, 1887)), where he noted major inconsistencies in Meucci's various testimonies, the paucity of direct evidence that both the Globe and Meucci brought forward in support of their defenses and the court's definitive rejection of those defenses in favour of Bell, Rockman then compares the 'Bell v. Globe and Meucci' court decision (of July 19, 1887) with HRes 269:

"I conclude that the comments of Mr. Grosvenor [who wrote a memo highly critical of HRes 269 by comparing it with Bell v. Globe] are more likely correct in comparison to the statements [within the preamble of HRes 269] by the United States House of Representatives."

Rockman then proceeded to dissect and parse the U.S. Government's 1887 legal challenge to Bell's telephone patent, which had been brought by United States Attorney General Augustus H. Garland. The Attorney General had earlier been given 500,000 shares of stock and was thus a major shareholder of the Pan-Electric Company, which was the instigator of the suit. Pan-Electric sought to overturn Bell's patent in order to compete against the American Bell Telephone Co.

It was this very court challenge that is referenced in HRes 269's preamble, in paragraph No. 9, which inferred an immoral and possibly criminal intent by Bell ("...the Government of the United States moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation"), to which Rockland wrote:

"The United States House of Representatives in its resolution of June 11, 2002 states merely that the government of the United States filed the lawsuit, and that the Supreme Court found the complaint viable and remanded the case for trial. The House of Representatives resolution, in my opinion, leaves out many of the salient details [of the Garland-initiated suit], and presents a disjointed and incorrect view of the invention of the telephone."

The same paragraph No. 9 of the Meucci resolution also did not mention that the U.S. Attorney General, plus another cabinet member, two senators, two key congressmen and a number of government officials had been given or owned millions of dollars of stock in Pan-Electric, as revealed by Joseph Pulitzer in the New York World, a fact which many viewed as a strong incentive for them to try to overturn Bell's patent.

U.S. President Grover Cleveland subsequently decided not to investigate his own administration and ordered the Attorney General not to "pursue the matter" after the court case stalled out. One of several biographies on the controversial Attorney General Augustus Garland's involvement in the 'Government case' noted:

"He did, however, suffer scandal involving the patent for the telephone. The Attorney General's office was intervening in a lawsuit attempting to break Bell's monopoly of telephone technology, but it had come out that Garland owned stock in one of the companies that stood to benefit. This congressional investigation received public attention for nearly a year, and caused his work as attorney general to suffer."

The 'Government Case', also known as the 'Pan-Electric Case', became one of the greatest scandals in Grover Cleveland's presidency, and was ended when Cleveland ordered Garland to discontinue the trial.

Other factual errors were also found within the preamble to the HRes 269 resolution, among them were:

Paragraph No. 2 of the resolution referred to Meucci's invention involving "electronic communications", however Meucci's patent caveat described a 'lover's telegraph' which transmitted sound vibrations mechanically across a taut wire, a conclusion that was also noted in Rockman's review ("The court further held that the caveat of Meucci did not describe any elements of an electric speaking telephone…..", and "The court held that Meucci's device consisted of a mechanical telephone consisting of a mouthpiece and an earpiece connected by a wire, and that beyond this the invention of Meucci was only imagination.")

Paragraphs Nos. 7 & 8 implied that Bell had access to Meucci's works prior to patenting the telephone ("….Meucci later learned that the Western Union affiliate laboratory reportedly lost his working models", followed by: "Alexander Graham Bell, who conducted experiments in the same laboratory where Meucci’s materials had been stored was granted a patent…. with inventing the telephone"). The same inference in the resolution was also described by Rockman. However, there is no record of Bell ever working in that laboratory, or even having heard of Meucci before the telephone patent was issued. All of Bell's notes only mentioned Meucci's name a single time, in 1886, when he was advised of a new court challenge. Research by Professor Catania himself showed that Meucci's samples were reportedly lost at a laboratory of American District Telegraph (ADT) of New York, but ADT was an independent company and did not become a subsidiary of Western Union until 1901. Writer and publisher (and Bell's great-great-grandson) Edwin S. Grosvenor also noted that with Bell living and working in the Boston and Brantford areas, and with Meucci living and working in the Staten Island, New York area, there was no overlap where Bell would have had access to Meucci's works prior to Bell's patent application. Grosvenor further pointed out that in 1878, two years after Bell received his patent, the American Bell Telephone Company, not Bell, was awarded a Western Electric laboratory as part of a patent infringement settlement with the Western Union Telegraph Company. With Bell never having worked in that laboratory, the timing of the 1878 transfer made it irrelevant in any event to Bell's patent application in February 1876. Additionally, the American Bell Telephone Company and Western Union were both competitors to each other and did not share facilities both prior to, and subsequent to the patent lawsuit settlement.

Paragraph No. 11 stated that "…if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain [his] caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell". However Grosvenor noted in a memo that Bell had succeeded in building a telephone based on a sound knowledge and understanding of its principles, whereas Meucci had been found by the court not to have understood the basics of the electric telephone's operation, with that court case having been conducted some 10 years after Bell was awarded his patent. Since Meucci's caveat didn't describe any of the principles of electric telephony, it would therefore have been irrelevant to Bell's application even had the caveat been renewed.

In total Grosvenor listed 10 errors in detail found within the congressional Meucci resolution, and was highly critical of both its intent and accuracy. He also asked two salient questions in Section "C" of the same report: "1) Should Congress overrule the US courts and its own committee, which looked at evidence extensively, and without reviewing any evidence in the matter?", and "2) Should [the U.S.] Congress pass resolutions on historical facts without checking with legitimate historians or their own library?" The same document also noted that HRes 269 contradicted the findings of its own Congressional committee's investigation, which had, in 1886, produced a report of 1,278 printed pages.

Grosvenor concluded that: "The historical “facts” stated in HR 269 were obtained from highly biased sources, and [were] based on shoddy, cursory research."

Reception

The motion was widely reported across Canada over the next three weeks. Canadian news sources detailed the motion’s birth and its underlying historical dispute. One notable review was in an Edmonton Journal opinion piece which admonished politicians for legislating ‘truth by decree’. A Vancouver Sun editorial also asked: "But since when are the minutiae of history a matter for the attention of our legislators?" Several reports wrote that the motion, like the U.S. "historical jingoism" which preceded it, was only an expression of opinion by a legislative body which did not carry any legal weight. However “…many saw the [American] declaration as an… attempt to rewrite history”. The motion was prominent on all major Canadian television news, with lede stories typically stating "Ottawa rose to the defense of Bell after the US Congress passed a resolution..... "

The Canadian Motion was also reported by media in several other countries, where the response was described as providing "heavy condemnation" of the U.S. resolution. Asked his opinion on the Canadian 'tit-for-tat' legislative motion, Italian telecommunications researcher and Meucci author Professor Basilio Catania stated on several occasions that the Canadian response was provoked by "unfortunate passages" directed at Bell, and as such was "quite understandable". Professor Catania, who had worked with U.S. House Representative Vito Fossella to bring about HRes 269, was declined a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps to discuss the motion. Many Italian Canadians were upset by the motion due to long held beliefs that Meucci was the telephone's inventor, according to the Italian-language weekly L'Ora Di Ottawa.

The motion was still referred to years after its passage, in reference to Bell’s primacy in the invention of the telephone. In an article on author Charlotte Gray's new book Reluctant Genius, the Ottawa Citizen noted "…Bell invented the telephone company… [and] thanks to a 2002 motion, the Parliament of Canada continues to recognize Bell as the [telephone's] inventor".

References

Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell Wikipedia

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