ALS signed "Yours truly, Alexander Graham Bell," one page, 4.5 x 7, Melville House letterhead, November 4, 1879. Handwritten letter to Samuel H. Scudder, librarian of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, asking for information on the claim by an Italian, Innocenzo Manzetti, to the invention of the telephone prior to Bell. In full: "In Du Moncel's work on the telephone he refers to the claims of an Italian—Signor Manzetti, of Aosta and states that his telephonic invention was described in the following newspapers in 1865: 'Le Petit Journal' of Paris, 22d Nov./65; 'Il Diritto' of Rome, July 16th 1865; 'L'Echo d'Italia,' New York, Aug. 9th 1865; 'L'Italia,' Florence, Aug. 10th 1865; 'La Comuna d'Italia,' Genoa, Dec. 1st, 1865; 'La Verita,' Novara, Jan. 4th 1866; 'La Commercio,' Genoa, Jan. 6th 1866. Is there any way by which I could obtain copies of the articles referred to?" In very fine condition.
The Italian inventor Innocenzo Manzetti reportedly developed a 'speaking telegraph' in 1864 or 1865, though he did not patent the device it became the subject of newspaper reports around the world. On November 22, 1865, in the first article Bell cites here, the Parisian newspaper Le Petit Journal reported briefly on an electrical telephone that could reproduce music and loudly spoken vowels with good quality, but could only produce softly spoken speech confusingly. The article's author astutely observed the profound significance of such an invention: 'Manzetti transmits directly the word by means of the ordinary telegraphic wire, with an apparatus simpler than the one which is now used for dispatches. Now, two merchants will be able to discuss their business instantly from London to Calcutta, announce each other speculations, propose them, conclude them. Many experiments have been made already. They were successful enough to establish the practical possibility of this discovery. Music can already be perfectly transmitted; as for the words, the sonorous ones are heard distinctly.'
Bell apparently references a work by the French electrical pioneer Theodose A. L. Du Moncel, 'Le téléphone, le microphone et le phonographe,' published in 1878 and translated into English in 1879, shortly before Bell's letter; however, suggestions that Bell stole Manzetti's idea appear to be unsubstantiated. The commercial success of Bell's telephone did lead to various legal battles over patents, most notably in the United States with Elisha Gray. A rare and fantastic letter by Alexander Graham Bell on his remarkable invention.
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