The NY Times, today
ran an article "It Doesn't Ring a Bell" about the dedication of
Meucci Square, previously
Gravesend Triangle, by Italian-Americans in 1940.
Synchronistically, just today I heard from Basilio Catania, the undisputed world wide expert on Telecommunications, and Antonio Meucci, recently appointed as Editor of the "Historian" section of the "European Transactions on Telecommunications" , and this important recognition is a consequence of the good acceptance of his papers on Meucci in that magazine, the last of which, "How Electrotherapy gave Birth to Telephony", has just been published.
He is currently working on his latest scientific article; "The Meucci-Bell Dichotomy," 45 pages long.
Basilio Catania has published 2 volumes of an intended 4 volume set of Meucci's life and "proofs" of his invention, in Italian. He has also available for publication a one volume abridged version in English.
It is shameful that no Italian American organization has seen the importance of taking on the task of finding a US publisher, or as a last resort funding the publishing of this 1 volume book, at least a short run. :(
For Catania to "pass
on" without his book being published in the US would leave the community
defenseless to fight off "counter attacks" by A.G. Bell's defenders.
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IT DOESN'T RING
A BELL
New York Times
By Michael Pollak
April 18, 2004
A small triangular park at West 12th Street and Avenue U in Gravesend, Brooklyn, contains a memorial plaque that reads: "Antonio Meucci, 1808-1889, Father of the Telephone." Father of the telephone? Hello?
A. Antonio Meucci, whose former home on Staten Island is the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum, was a versatile inventor who played a colorful part in the struggle for Italian unification. But he was an unlucky businessman. He failed in his attempts to get the United States Patent Office to recognize him, and not Alexander Graham Bell, as the inventor of the telephone. A loyal following refuses to give up. In 1940, Italian-Americans christened the Gravesend triangle as Meucci Square. It includes a model of one of his bell-shaped earpieces.
Meucci, who emigrated from Italy to Cuba before coming to the United States, spent 15 years as chief mechanic with the opera in Havana. There he began experimenting with small currents of electricity to treat ailments, and he noticed that the copper wires appeared to transmit the human voice. Settling in Staten Island in 1850, he spent decades tinkering with a sound transmission device and in 1871 obtained a provisional patent. But he had lost his savings in bad investments, and in 1874 he failed to pay the $10 fee to renew the patent.
He complained that his later efforts at official recognition were thwarted because a telegraph company (where Bell worked) "lost" his original designs and prototype, and because his wife had sold his other models to pay debts. Bell was awarded a patent in 1876.
Meucci was a befriender of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian independence. He sheltered and, through his candle-making factory, employed the exiled Garibaldi off and on from 1850 to 1854, when Garibaldi returned to Italy. The frame cottage where Meucci and Garibaldi lived has been moved to Chestnut and Tompkins Avenues in Rosebank, Staten Island. Its artifacts include one of the red shirts Garibaldi made famous at the defense of Rome, and several earpieces Meucci designed. Information on the museum is at www.garibaldimeuccimuseum.org.
The Mystery of II Steps
Q. At the entrance to Ewen Park at Johnson Avenue and 231st Street in Riverdale, the Bronx, a plaque reads, "CLX Steps Kingsbridge Connection." At the entrance on the other side, at 231st and Riverdale Avenue, another plaque reads, "CLX Steps Road to Riverdale." I assume that is the number of steps (Latin for 160) you must walk up or down in either direction. But having done it a few times, I count only 158. Where did the other 2 go?
A. The reason for this discrepancy, a Parks Department spokesman said, is that when renovations on the park began in 1999, the parks commissioner at the time, Henry J. Stern, gave the long stairway the name CLX Steps. The stair links Riverdale and Kingsbridge in this hilly park, which is considered one of the city's best for sledding.
When the steps were reconstructed, two had to be removed as part of the work. The plaques, however, had already been made and so they read "CLX Steps'' instead of CLVIII.
That Oddity on Park
Q. The building at 1015 Park Avenue is one of the more architecturally odd buildings in the city. Do you know anything about its past?
A. That 1914 Federal Revival town house, also known as 100 East 85th Street, was designated a city landmark in 1973. A red-brick building on the southeast corner of 85th Street, it was designed by Ernest Flagg, a prominent Brooklyn-born architect, with hipped-roof dormer and quarter-round windows and a cupola over its elevator tower. It also had a garage, unusual for the day.
Flagg built it for Lewis Gouverneur Morris, a descendant of a New York colonial family. After Morris died in 1967, his daughters sold the house to the New World Foundation, active in civil rights, education and peace issues...
The
New York Times > New York Region > F.Y.I.: It Doesn't Ring a Bell
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/nyregion/18fyi.html
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Basilio
Catania 's work on Antonio Meucci
http://www.esanet.it/chez_basilio/meucci.htm
Basilio
Catania: a lifelong researcher in telecommunications
http://www.esanet.it/chez_basilio/