Further down I will share with you a suprisingly sympathetic article from the 
London Guardian Unlimited, regarding Italy's response to the US Congress 
Resolution  regarding Meucci as the Inventor of the Telephone. [The Brits 
have this "superior" attitude toward Italy, and consider it a giant "Theme 
Park" where there are no residents, but "merely" employees of the Park [;-)] 

First, allow me to re emphasize my use of the word "Declares", rather than 
the suggestion of one of my readers that stated that the word "Acknowledge" 
would be more accurate since the Resolution "simply acknowledged Meucci's 
contributions".

Also notice that the person also said that the Resolution only acknowledged 
Meucci's "contributions", NOT that Meucci was the "inventor" of the 
Telephone.   

I respectfully, and emphatically disagree on both points!!!!!

Here is my case. Definitions first. "Resolution", "Declare", and "Acknowledge".
If I am wrong, write, and tell me why!!!! 

Mostly I cite from Online (AOL) Miriam -Webster:

RESOLUTION: solving, the act of determining,  something that is resolved, a 
formal expression of opinion, will, or intent voted by an official body or 
assembled group 

DECLARE: to make known formally, officially, or explicitly, to make clear, to 
make evident,  to state emphatically, to make a declaration, to avow one's 
opinion or support.

Use: Declare, means to make known publicly, implies explicitness and usually 
formality in making known. 

I then also recite from:  The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College 
Edition 

DECLARE:  Transitive: (1) To state officially or formal announcement (2) to 
state with emphasis or authority; affirm (3) To reveal or manifest; prove
Intransitive: (1) to make a declaration (2) To proclaim one's choice, 
opinion, 
RESOLUTION..
Declarare: Latin   de (intensive) + clarare, to make clear ; clarus, clear

ACKNOWLEDGE:
1 : to recognize the rights, authority, or status of 
3 a : to express gratitude or obligation for  b : to take notice of 
4 : to recognize as genuine or valid 
Use: implies the disclosing of something that has been or might be concealed. 

Now the Argument:

Please note that the definitions could be interchangeable, especially since 
one of the meanings of Declare IS Resolution.

I prefer the word "Declare" since to me it sounds more powerful, and authoritative.
I will however "settle" for a Proclamation!! :)

But More Important-----It is NOT a matter of "simply" or "merely" acknowledging,
BUT the US Congress is stating it is ABSOLUTELY RESOLVING!

Think in terms of the "Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties 
Act" Legislation that included "a formal ACKNOWLEDGMENT of injustices 
suffered by Italian Americans during World War II". 

Was this a "merely" or "simply", or was it an Unequivocal STATEMENT OF FACT??

The Guardian Unlimited seems to support "my use" with phrases like: 
Bell did NOT Invent Telephone [if not, then who??? By implication Meucci!!!!].
"recognise...Meucci, as a father of modern communications", recognised a 
...Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than...Bell", 
"made him the inventor", "made him the inventor of the telephone in the place 
of Bell", "vote to recognise the Tuscan inventor", 

I hope this was not too tiresome. The Devil (the Attorney in me) made me do it !!
======================================================
Thanks to H-ITAM via Laura E. Ruberto

BELL DID NOT INVENT TELEPHONE, US RULES
 
Scot accused of finding fame by stealing Italian's ideas

Rory Carroll in Rome
Guardian Unlimited, England
Monday June 17, 2002
 

Italy hailed the redress of a historic injustice yesterday after the US 
Congress recognised an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of 
the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell. 

Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to 
recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of 
modern communications, 113 years after his death. 

The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in Meucci's 
homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious Scot who found 
fortune and fame by stealing another man's work. 

Calling the Italian's career extraordinary and tragic, the resolution said 
his "teletrofono", demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of 
the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to Meucci's materials and 
who took out a patent 16 years later. 

"It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and 
achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised, and his work in the 
invention of the telephone should be acknowledged," the resolution stated. 

Bell's immortalisation in books and films has rankled with generations of 
Italians who know Meucci's story. Born in 1808, he studied design and 
mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and as a 
stage technician at the city's Teatro della Pergola developed a primitive 
system to help colleagues communicate. 

In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat 
illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by electrical 
impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved to Staten Island, 
near New York City, in 1850 to develop the technology. 

When Meucci's wife, Ester, became paralysed he rigged a system to link her 
bedroom with his neighbouring workshop and in 1860 held a public 
demonstration which was reported in New York's Italian-language press. 

In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to find 
financial backing, failed to master English and was severely burned in an 
accident aboard a steamship. 

Forced to make new prototype telephones after Ester sold his machines for $6 
to a secondhand shop, his models became more sophisticated. An inductor 
formed around an iron core in the shape of a cylinder was a technique so 
sophisticated that it was used decades later for long-distance connections. 

Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his 
"talking telegraph" so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an 
impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew 
it. 

He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company 
but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials 
to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later 
Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, 
became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union. 

Meucci sued and was nearing victory - the supreme court agreed to hear the 
case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell - when the Florentine died 
in 1889. The legal action died with him. 

Yesterday the newspaper La Repubblica welcomed the vote to recognise the 
Tuscan inventor as a belated comeuppance for Bell, a "cunning Scotsman" and 
"usurper" whose per- fidy built a communications empire. 
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