History books will often lead you to believe
that the world’s great inventions and discoveries
were the work of a single person with a flash
of genius, but the reality is rarely that
simple.
In most cases, it was only after years of
work and input from countless inventors that
something was finally created.
Still, there are plenty of instances where
the rush to ascribe credit for a particular
discovery led to large scale controversy,
and it wasn’t unusual for these arguments
to take on personal and often illegal turns.
Here are ten of the most famous examples:
10.
The Invention of the Intermittent Windshield
Wiper
Early windshield wipers had only one speed,
and this made them distracting and even dangerous
in certain conditions.
The intermittent windshield wiper solved this
problem by letting drivers adjust the speed
of their wiper blades, allowing for lag time
and slower action when driving in light rain.
American inventor Robert Kearns filed a patent
for the intermittent wiper in 1964.
He shopped his new invention around to the
“Big Three” auto manufacturers, but he
had no luck getting them to license it as
a product.
A few years later, though, a form of intermittent
wiper nearly identical to Kearns’s prototype
began appearing as a standard feature on most
of their cars.
Kearns sued Ford for patent infringement in
1978, and took Chrysler to court four years
later.
The companies argued that the intermittent
wiper was obvious and had no new components,
and therefore didn’t meet the standards
of being a novel, patentable invention.
Kearns disagreed, and would eventually spend
nearly 15 years and over $10 million in legal
fees in his fight to be compensated.
Who Deserves the Credit?
According to the American court system, Kearns
deserves the credit for inventing the intermittent
wiper.
He settled out of court with Ford for $10
million in the early ’90s.
Meanwhile, the Chrysler case became a high
profile lawsuit, which Kearns won in 1995
to the tune of $30 million in overdue compensation.
Kearns died in 2005, but his fight with the
big auto manufacturers remains one of the
most famous patent infringement cases in U.S.
history, and his story was even made into
a movie called Flash of Genius in 2008.
9.
The First to the North Pole
The first person to make a claim on having
reached the North Pole was the American adventurer
Frederick Albert Cook, who in 1909 said he’d
made the journey with two Inuit companions
in April of 1908.
According to Cook, harsh weather conditions
had made a return too dangerous, and he had
been forced to spend the winter in the Arctic.
But Cook was able to produce little proof
of his accomplishment, and he was immediately
regarded by some as a fraud.
Perhaps his harshest critic was the explorer
and Naval engineer Robert Peary, who surfaced
only five days later with the claim that he
had just returned from a successful polar
expedition in April of 1909.
Peary was a master of working the media, and
he and his supporters soon began questioning
Cook’s claim.
The argument turned personal after both men
sold their expedition stories to rival newspapers,
and what followed was muckraking on an epic
scale.
Peary and company began researching all of
Cook’s previous accomplishments—including
a summit of Mt. McKinley a few years prior—and
they even questioned his sanity.
Cook eventually left the country, an act that
was seen by many as an admission of guilt,
and the National Geographic Society subsequently
awarded Peary the credit for being the first
to reach the North Pole.
Who Deserves the Credit?
As it so happens, most of Peary’s charges
against Cook were largely justified.
There is no historical evidence that Cook
made it to the Pole, and today most historians
have cast his claim aside.
What’s surprising, though, is that the same
can be said of Peary.
Modern researchers have found countless holes
in his story—chief among them that his party
contained no navigator skilled enough to lead
them to the Pole—and all attempted recreations
of his journey have found many of his claims
about how fast he progressed to be completely
baseless.
There have been many other claims since then,
but amazingly no one was able to indisputably
reach the Pole via an overland route until
1968, when a group led by Ralph Plaisted made
the journey on snow mobiles.
8.
The Invention of Calculus
In the early 18th century, calculus was at
the center of a years-long controversy that
raged between two of the world’s most famous
mathematicians: Isaac Newton and Gottfried
Leibniz.
Both men had been experimenting with the new
branch of mathematics for much of the late
1600s.
Leibniz was the first to publish an official
paper on the subject in 1684 (Newton would
take until 1693), but friends and associates
of Newton were quick to point out that Newton’s
notebooks made reference to calculus as far
back as 1666.
Moreover, they argued that Leibniz was privy
to Newton’s early work, and some even accused
him of plagiarism.
Leibniz and his supporters argued that his
calculus discovery came independently of any
of Newton’s work.
Despite these protests, the majority opinion
was always on the side of Newton.
At best, Leibniz was credited with having
invented an alternate (albeit superior, in
many ways) form of notation for Newton’s
discovery.
Who Deserves the Credit?
A 1713 review by the Royal Society found Newton
to be in the right, and he was widely regarded
as the inventor of calculus for the next 100
years.
Today, though, it is widely believed that
both men contributed different pieces of the
puzzle independently of one another.
Newton is regarded as the founder of infinitesimal
calculus, while Leibniz is considered the
father of integral and differential calculus.
7.
The Discovery of Neptune
The planet Neptune was first observed in the
early seventeenth century by Galileo, who
hypothesized that it might be a star.
But it was not until the 1800s that a serious
search for it began, after scientists noticed
that Uranus’s orbit seemed to be affected
by an outside gravitational force.
The British mathematician John Couch Adams
was the first to hypothesize that this object
might be a new planet, and in 1843 he made
the first calculations of its possible orbit
and size.
A couple years later, the French astronomer
Urbain Le Verrier undertook the same investigation
independently of Adams and came up with similar
calculations.
Both men had trouble getting their colleagues
interested in the search, so Le Verrier wrote
a letter to an observatory in Berlin asking
them to use their telescope to search the
skies for his hypothetical planet.
Le Verrier’s letter arrived on September
23, 1846, and using his calculations, a student
at the observatory discovered Neptune that
very same night.
Almost immediately, there was a controversy
over who—Adams or Le Verrier—could claim
the discovery as his own.
The rivalry eventually took on nationalistic
overtones, with both the French and the British
claiming their scientist was responsible for
finding Neptune.
Who Deserves the Credit?
After some squabbling between rival groups,
it was decided that Adams and Le Verrier would
share the credit for discovering Neptune.
But despite this consensus, all evidence points
to Le Verrier as the more deserving of the
two.
Not only did he encourage the search that
found the planet, but it was also his calculations
that made it possible, as they were within
one degree of the planet’s actual location.
Adams, meanwhile, was as many as 12 degrees
off course.
6.
The Invention of the Movie Camera
Who invented a particular technology often
varies depending on where you are in the world,
and the movie camera is a perfect example.
In the U.S., as with many inventions, the
credit has always gone to Thomas Edison, who
first made moving pictures in the early 1890s.
In the U.K., the honor goes to William Friese-Greene,
who issued one of the earliest camera patents
in 1889.
In France, the fathers of the cinema are considered
to be Louis and Auguste Lumiere, who invented
the cinematographe and first began shooting
and exhibiting films in 1895.
Looming over them all is Louis Le Prince,
a largely forgotten Frenchman who designed
a motion picture camera and projection system
in 1888 before disappearing without a trace.
Just who deserves the most credit among these
inventors has always been a subject of contention.
Patent controversies abound, especially in
the case of Le Prince, who was denied a patent
on a single lens camera in the U.S., only
for Edison to be given a remarkably similar
patent a few years later.
In addition, there is still a debate about
what really constitutes a “moving picture
camera.”
Modern movies run at 24 frames per second,
but most of these proto-films were lucky to
achieve a rate half that fast.
This has frequently been a source of criticism
against Friese-Greene, whose camera only ran
at ten frames per second, which is such a
low rate that some have argued it doesn’t
even qualify.
Who Deserves the Credit?
Louis Le Prince’s mysterious disappearance
meant that he wasn’t able to exhibit his
invention as much as the others, so he never
built the same reputation as people like Edison
or the Lumieres.
Still, as more information is uncovered, it
seems that film historians are continually
moving towards Le Prince as the true inventor
of the film camera.
His patent from 1888 was the first of all
these inventors.
Meanwhile, the world’s oldest surviving
film, the two-second Roundhay Garden Scene,
was shot with his camera.
There’s little doubt that the other inventors
deserve some credit, especially the brothers
Lumiere, who were pioneers in perfecting modern
film projection systems.
But when talking about who really invented
the first film camera, the evidence points
to Louis Le Prince.
5.
The Invention of Radio
There were a number of scientists who played
crucial roles in the race to first transmit
and receive radio signals, but the main invention
controversy has always centered on the famed
Serbian-Croatian inventor Nikola Tesla and
the Italian Guglielmo Marconi.
As early as 1891, Tesla was giving speeches
on the possible practical uses of radio waves
in mass communication, and he was even said
to have demonstrated a wireless system in
1893.
But Tesla, always hampered by a poor business
sense, failed to capitalize on radio as a
marketable tool, and though he claimed to
have made 50-mile radio transmissions as early
as 1895, none were ever verified.
Marconi, meanwhile, applied for a patent on
a radio system as early as 1896.
In 1897, he formed his own wireless company
and became the first man to commercialize
radio.
He was also the first to make a transatlantic
radio transmission in 1901, though this claim
has been disputed.
What’s more, Marconi is believed to have
based most of his radio designs on ideas that
had already been widely described by Tesla
and another inventor named Oliver Lodge.
Tesla was the first of the two to receive
a patent for his radio transmitter, but this
was later overturned in a controversial decision
and given to Marconi.
Over 40 years later, this decision was itself
overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court after
countless legal challenges.
Tesla had died only months earlier.
Who Deserves the Credit?
To give sole credit to either of these men
is a grand generalization, but of the two,
Tesla certainly seems the more important figure.
There’s no argument that Marconi was the
more business savvy of the two inventors,
and his practical implementation of radio
definitely makes him a major player in its
creation.
But it was Tesla who was most responsible
for the ideas and the technical expertise
that truly made radio transmission possible,
and if anyone deserves the title of “the
father of radio,” it’s him.
4.
The First Flying Machine
Sometimes the controversy isn’t just over
who invented a certain technology, but over
what it was they invented.
Such is the case with the so-called “first
flying machine,” the exact definition of
which has never been agreed upon.
Some would charge that any craft that got
airborne should be considered a flying machine,
including hot air balloons and airships.
On this basis, the true father of flight would
be Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, who became
the first person to make a manned balloon
flight in 1783.
Others argue that a true flying machine must
be heavier than air, which would disqualify
balloons.
By these terms, the honor would probably go
to England’s George Cayley, who first flew
a glider in 1853.
Still, the most common definition of an actual
flying machine is any manned aircraft that
is powered and controlled by onboard mechanics,
in which case Orville and Wilbur Wright are
usually given the credit for their 1903 flight
in North Carolina.
But even then there is room for debate.
Germany’s Karl Jatho and Gustave Whitehead
and New Zealand’s Richard Pearse each made
their own manned flights in the early 1900s,
all before the Wright brothers.
Who Deserves the Credit?
According to the modern definition of a “flying
machine,” it would seem that the Wright
brothers are correctly considered to be flight’s
true pioneers.
They might not have been “first in flight,”
as North Carolina license plates like to proclaim,
but they did perfect a lot of the technology
that is still used in aviation today.
What ultimately sets them apart from the others
is how controlled and prolonged their flights
were.
Richard Pearse got airborne before the Wright
Brothers, but his plane crashed into a hedge.
Meanwhile, Jatho’s plane only got ten feet
off the ground, and Whitehead’s claims,
while interesting, are largely unsubstantiated.
If anyone deserves to share some of the honor
with the Wrights it is the British glider
pilot Cayley, who discovered many key aviation
forces like drag and thrust, and who has often
been called the unsung “father of aviation.”
3.
The Discovery of HIV
In the early ‘80s, AIDS was already recognized
as a serious epidemic, and research teams
were soon formed to try and isolate the particular
virus that caused it.
Of these, two groups—one led by the French
scientist Luc Montagnier and the other by
the American Robert Gallo—nearly simultaneously
published papers in 1983-4 describing the
virus we now know as HIV.
A controversy soon erupted in the scientific
community over which group had more of a claim
to the discovery.
Montagnier’s group had published first,
but Gallo’s description was more detailed
and specifically linked the virus to AIDS.
The fervor over ownership of the discovery
centered on more than just prestige, since
the country responsible would be able to claim
the patent for an AIDS test.
Soon, both the French and American governments
were involved in what was often a bitter dispute.
There were even cries of foul play, as Gallo
and company were charged and later cleared
of having “misappropriated” a sample of
the virus they received from Montagnier’s
institute.
Who Deserves the Credit?
Today, it’s widely agreed that both parties
made major contributions to the discovery
of HIV.
Montagnier’s group published first, and
as such they are commonly regarded as having
first isolated the virus, but Gallo is credited
with developing a great deal of the research
and technology that linked it to AIDS.
The two scientists themselves are now on amicable
terms, and they’ve frequently worked together
over the years.
Still, this hasn’t stopped awards committees
from picking favorites: in 2008, only Montagnier
was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in
the discovery of HIV, an honor which even
he noted should have been shared with Gallo.
2.
The Invention of the Light Bulb
America’s Thomas Edison is popularly regarded
as the pioneer of the incandescent light bulb,
but the list of other possible contenders
is long and goes back more than 70 years before
his 1879 patent.
The British inventor Humphry Davy is said
to have created a crude electric light in
1802, and by 1840 inventors like Warren De
la Rue were already using vacuum tubes and
experimenting with different types of filaments.
Just who of these early pioneers deserves
to be called the father of the light bulb
has always been hard to say.
From 1840-1880, patents were filed for a number
of different prototypes.
Of these the most famous undoubtedly belong
to Edison and England’s Joseph Wilson Swann,
who first began researching the light bulb
in the 1870s.
Swann caused in stir in 1878, after his light
bulb prototype was demonstrated in Newcastle,
and he holds the honor of owning the first
house to ever be illuminated with electric
lights.
Edison, meanwhile, didn’t even begin to
address the issue of inventing a light bulb
until 1878, but when he did, he had soon made
major breakthroughs.
Chief among them was his discovery of a longer
lasting filament, first made from carbon and
later from carbonized bamboo.
It was only then that light bulbs went from
lasting mere hours to days and even months.
Who Deserves the Credit?
Edison’s discoveries undoubtedly led to
more modern and efficient light bulbs, but
to list him as their sole inventor is a vast
overstatement.
Even his own patents describe his invention
as merely an “improvement in electric lights.”
His was the first reliable light bulb, but
when talking about who invented the first
light bulb, the credit must go to England’s
Warren de la Rue, who was the first to run
electricity through filament in a vacuum sealed
tube, a feat he accomplished some 38 years
before Edison in 1840.
1.
The Invention of the Telephone
Your elementary school teacher might have
told you that Alexander Graham Bell invented
the telephone in 1876, but the true story
is much more complicated, and stands as the
most famous of all these controversies.
There are a number of inventors involved in
the mix, among them the Italian Innocenzo
Manzetti, who some say might have built a
prototype phone in the 1860s, and Johann Philipp
Reis, who made an early microphone that could
transmit sound called the “Reis Telephone”
in 1861.
But the main competition has always been between
Scotland’s Bell, an Italian inventor named
Antonio Meucci, and the American Elisha Gray.
Meucci invented a communication device in
the 1850s, and his 1871 patent is one of the
earliest for any kind of voice transmitter.
The real controversy, though, has always been
between Bell and Gray, both of whom filed
patents for a telephone on the exact same
day in 1876.
Critics of Bell often cast him as a shrewd
businessman (which he undoubtedly was) who
stole several of Gray’s ideas, and it has
even been argued that Bell bribed a patent
office employee and added in several key parts
to his inventions days after he first filed
it.
These claims were partly vindicated in the
1880s, when a patent officer testified in
court that Bell had paid him in order to look
at Gray’s plans.
Who Deserves the Credit?
Today, popular opinion on who really invented
the telephone depends on where and who you
ask.
In the U.S., it’s either Gray or Bell; in
Italy, it’s Meucci.
The controversy eventually led to lawsuits,
and it was still being argued as recently
as 2002, when the United States House of Representatives
passed a resolution recognizing the contributions
of Meucci in the invention of the telephone—a
resolution which was countered only days later
when the Canadian government officially recognized
Bell.
In the end, this is yet another case where
several inventors deserve partial credit.
Bell was the savvy businessman who was able
to perfect and market what would become a
world-changing invention, but there’s little
doubt that Gray and Meucci both deserve to
be recognized with him as the real inventors
of the telephone.
