U.S. recognizes Meucci as telephone inventor. (World).

It's now official: the inventor of the telephone was not Alexander Graham Bell, but Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant who died in poverty in 1889 in New York, after having been cheated out of the patent for the invention. Only recently did a U.S. Congress resolution recognize the achievements of Meucci for the invention of the telephone. Despite this, the resolution has been virtually ignored by large American media groups.

After his arrival in New York, Meucci worked on a project he had started in Cuba, a new invention he called the "teletrophone," based on electronic communications. The poor immigrant had neither the money nor the contacts to obtain a proper patent. However, after obtaining a license in 1871, he managed to deliver some prototypes of the invention to Western Union, but the company later claimed to have lost them and refused to provide him the financial assistance necessary to renew the license. Two years later, Western Union obtained the patent on behalf of Bell, who had worked on Meucci's prototypes and took the credit for the invention.

In 1887, Bell's patent was annulled when found fraudulent and the U.S. Supreme Court ratified the annulment, but Meucci died before the patent could be contested.