Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter
“On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted US Patent No. 174,565 for the speaking telegraph or telephone. Three weeks earlier, on February 14, both Bell and another inventor, Elisha Gray, submitted their respective ideas to the US Patent Office. On March 10, Bell used a liquid transmitter (an early microphone) to call his assistant, Thomas Watson, with the words, ‘Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you.’ This is commonly regarded as the first intelligible voice transmission over an electrical wire. With that in mind, this year not only marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, the 100th year of Murray Rothbard, and 40 years of Mises University, but also 150 years since the official invention of the telephone. This provides an opportunity to review the history of how telephone invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship—combined with cronyism, patents, regulations, and monopoly—shaped the landscape of the telephone industry for generations.” (08/14/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/ahoy-ahoy-telephone-entrepreneurship-and-cronyism