Antonio Meucci (April 13, 1808 – October 18, 1889) was a compatriot of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, and an inventor, best known for developing a voice communication apparatus in 1857. Many people credit him with the invention of the telephone.

Meucci set up a form of voice communication link in his Staten Island home that connected the basement with the first floor. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephone like device in 1871, which he chose not to renew after 1874. According to Meucci historian G.E. Schiavo: "Meucci was not granted a patent [for the device], but a caveat, a kind of provisional patent. Anybody could get a caveat, even if the invention was worthless." In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound by undulatory electric current.

Meucci was born at Via dei Serragli, 44 in San Frediano, a borough of Florence, Italy, on April 13, 1808. He studied chemical and mechanical engineering at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and later worked at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as a stage technician, assisting Artemio Canovetti. In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro della Pergola. This telephone was constructed on the principles of pipe telephones used on ships and is still working.

He married costume designer Ester Mochi on August 7, 1834.

He was alleged to be part of a conspiracy involving the Italian unification movement in 1833 – 1834, and was imprisoned for three months with Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi.

In October 1835, Meucci and his wife left Florence, never to return. They had accepted the proposal of a Spanish theater manager, Don Francisco Martì y Torrens, and emigrated to the Americas, stopping first in Cuba, then a Spanish province, where Meucci accepted a job at what was then called the Great Tacón Theater in Havana (at the time, the greatest theater in the Americas). In Havana he constructed a system for water purification and reconstructed the Gran Teatro, which had since been almost entirely destroyed by a hurricane. In 1848 his contract with the Governor expired. Meucci was asked by a friend's doctors to work on Franz Anton Mesmer's therapy system on patients suffering from rheumatism. In 1849 Meucci developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat illness and subsequently made an experiment developing a device through which one could hear inarticulated human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (lit. "talking telegraph"). In 1850, the third renewal of his contract with Don Francisco Martì y Torrens expired. Meucci's friendship with the General Giuseppe Garibaldi made him a suspect citizen in Cuba. On the other hand, the fame reached by Samuel F.B. Morse in the United States encouraged Meucci to make his living through inventions.

On April 13, 1850 Meucci and his wife left Havana to immigrate to the United States, settling in the Clifton area of Staten Island, New York, where he would live for the remainder of his life. In Staten Island he helped several countrymen committed to the Italian unification movement ("Risorgimento") and escaped from political persecution. He invested the substantial capital he had earned in Cuba in a tallow candle factory (the first of this kind in America) employing several Italian exiles. For two years Meucci also hosted in his cottage his friends the General Giuseppe Garibaldi and Colonel Paolo Bovi Campeggi, who arrived in New York two months after Meucci. They worked in Meucci's factory.

In 1854 Meucci's wife Ester became definitively invalid because of a serious form of rheumatoid arthritis, whereas Meucci continued his experiments. He is reported to have bought material from a certain Charles Chester's shop in New York. Meucci had studied the principles of electromagnetic voice transmission for many years, but was purportedly able to realise his dream of transmitting his voice through wires in 1856. Meucci had finally built the first prototype. He installed a telephone like device within his house in order to communicate with his wife who was ill at the time. Some of Meucci's notes purportedly written in 1857 describe the basic principle of electromagnetic voice transmission or in other words, the telephone:

«consiste in un diaframma vibrante e in un magnete elettrizzato da un filo a spirale che lo avvolge. Vibrando, il diaframma altera la corrente del magnete. Queste alterazioni di corrente, trasmesse all'altro capo del filo, imprimono analoghe vibrazioni al diaframma ricevente e riproducono la parola».

Translation: "It consists of a vibrating diaphragm and an electrified magnet from a wire that wraps around it in a spiral. The vibrating diaphragm alters the current of the magnet. These alterations of current are all transmitted to the other end of the wire, creating analogous vibrations to the receiving diaphragm and thus, reproduce the words."

Meucci constructed the first electromagnetic telephone. He built his working prototype as a way of connecting his second floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus being able to communicate with his wife. Between 1856 and 1870, Meucci developed more than 30 different kinds of telephones on the basis of this prototype. In about 1858, the painter Nestore Corradi made a sketch of Meucci's ideas (this drawing was used as the image on a stamp produced in 2003 by the Italian Postal and Telegraph Society).

Meucci had very good ideas of developing his prototype, however he didn't have the economical means to keep his company afloat so as to finance his invention. His candle factory went bankrupt and Meucci was then obliged to look for funds from rich Italian families. Unfortunately his efforts were in vain. In 1860 Meucci asked his friend Enrico Bandelari to look for Italian capitalists willing to finance his project. However, military expeditions led by General Garibaldi in Italy had made the political situation in that country too unstable for anybody to invest. Meucci then purportedly published his invention in the New York Italian language newspaper "L'Eco d'Italia", although no copy of such reports have ever been located dating back to searches prior to his court case in the 1880s.

At the same time, Meucci was led to poverty by some fraudulent debtors. On November 13, 1861 his cottage was auctioned. The purchaser allowed the Meuccis to live in the cottage without paying rent, but Meucci's private finances dwindled so that he soon had to live on public funds and by depending on his friends.

As mentioned in William J. Wallace's ruling, during the years 1859, 1860, and 1861 Meucci was in close business and social relations with William E. Ryder, who was interested in his inventions, paid the expenses of his experiments, and invested money in Meucci’s inventions. Their close working friendship continued until 1867.

In August 1870, Meucci reportedly was able to capture a transmission of articulated human voice at the distance of a mile by using a copper plait as a conductor, insulated by cotton. He called this device, the "telettrofono". While he was recovering from injuries that befell him in a boiler explosion aboard the Staten Island Ferry, Westfield, Antonio Meucci's financial and health state was so bad that his wife Ester sold his drawings and devices to a second-hand dealer to raise some money.

On December 12, 1871 Meucci set up an agreement with Angelo Zilio Grandi (Secretary of the Italian Consulate in New York), Angelo Antonio Tremeschin (entrepreneur), Sereno G.P. Breguglia Tremeschin (businessman), in order to constitute the Telettrofono Company. The constitution was notarized by Angelo Bertolino, a Notary Public of New York. Although their society funded him with $20, only $15 was needed to file for a full patent application. The caveat his lawyer submitted to the US Patent Office on December 28, 1871 was numbered 3335 and titled "Sound Telegraph".

Meucci repeatedly focused on insulating the electrical conductor and even insulating the persons communicating, but does not explain why this would be desirable. The mouth piece is like a "speaking trumpet" so that "the sound concentrated upon the wire" is communicated to the other person, but he does not say that the sound is to be converted to variable electrical conduction in the wire. "Another instrument is also applied to the ears," but he does not say that variable electrical conduction in the wire is to be converted to sound. In the third claim, he claims "a sound conductor which is also an electrical conductor, as a means of communication by sound" which is consistent with acoustic sound vibrations in the wire that somehow get transmitted better if electrical conductors such as a wire or metallic tube are used. He emphasizes that the conductors "for mouth and ears... must be metallic", but does not explain why this would be desirable. He mentions "communication with the ground" but does not suggest that a ground return must complete a circuit if only "the wire" (singular case, not plural) is used between the sender's mouth piece and the receiver's ear piece, with one or the other person being electrically insulated from the ground by means of glass insulators ("...consists in isolating two persons... by placing them upon glass insulators; employing glass, for example, at the foot of the chair or bench on which each sits, and putting them in communication by means of a telegraph wire."). Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of devices for converting sound to electrical waves and electrical waves to sound. There is no mention of an electromagnet, even though morse telegraphs use electromagnets. There is no mention of coils of wire or permanent magnets or magnetism. Neither is there any mention of a battery or other source of electrical power, nor of a diaphragm. The members of Telettrofono Company either died or left New York City.

In summer 1872 Meucci and his friend Angelo Bertolino went to Edward B. Grant, Vice President of American District Telegraph Co. of New York, to ask for help. Meucci asked him for permission to test his telephone apparatus on the company's telegraph lines. He gave Grant a description of his prototype and a copy of his caveat. After waiting two years, Meucci went to Grant and asked him to be given back his documents, but Grant answered he had lost them.

(Critics dispute the claim that Meucci could not afford to file for a patent, as he filed for and was granted full patents in 1872, 1873, 1875, and 1876, at the cost of $35 each, for inventions unrelated to the telephone. However, others suggest that Meucci may not have felt his telephone invention had much commercial value, and prioritized his focus, energy and limited budget on inventions that appeared to have more immediate financial returns. When Meucci learned that Bell filed a patent that infringed on his invention, Meucci now understood that Bell's interest meant there was commercial value and then protested.)

About 1873 a certain Bill Carroll from Boston, who had news about Meucci's invention, asked him to construct a "telephone for divers". This device should allow divers to communicate with people on the surface. In Meucci's drawing, this device is essentially an electromagnetic telephone encapsulated to be waterproof.

On December 28, 1874, Meucci's caveat expired.

When Bell secured his own patent in 1876, Meucci took Bell to court in order to state his priority on the grounds of patent infringement. Being too poor to hire a legal team, Meucci was defended only by lawyer Joe Melli, an orphan whom Meucci treated as a son. While the "American Bell Telephone Company v. Globe Telephone Company, Antonio Meucci, et al." trial was going on, the Bell Telephone Company became involved with another notable trial "The U.S. Government v. American Bell Telephone Company", instigated by the Pan-Electric Telephone Company which had secretly given the U.S. Attorney General 10% of its shares, employed him as a director, and then asked him to void Bell's patent. Had he succeeded in overturning Bell's patent, he stood to become exceedingly rich by reason of his shares.

Meucci's telephone was said to be described in the L'Eco d'Italia newspaper of New York in the beginning of 1861, though no issues of the 1861 - 1863 period are available in the libraries of the United States. Having apparently been destroyed in a fire, Antonio Meucci had to swear in court proceedings what he remembered he wrote in the newspaper. The Havana experiments were briefly mentioned in a letter by Meucci, published by Il Commercio di Genova of 1 December 1865 and by L'Eco d'Italia of October 21^st 1865 (both existing today). One of the most important pieces of evidence brought up in the trial was Antonio Meucci's "Memorandum Book". This book, produced by Rider & Clark, contained Antonio Meucci's noted drawings and records since 1862 up to 1882. In the trial, Antonio Meucci was accused of having produced records after Alexander Graham Bell's invention and back-dated them. As proof, the prosecutor brought forward the fact that the Rider & Clark company was founded only in 1863. In the trial, Antonio Meucci said that William E. Rider himself, one of the owners, had given him a copy of the memorandum book in 1862, however Meucci was not believed.

On 13 January 1887, the United States Government moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. After a series of decisions and reversals, the Bell company won a decision in the Supreme Court, though a couple of the original claims from the lower court cases were left undecided. By the time that the trial wound its way through nine years of legal battles, the U.S. prosecuting attorney had died and the two Bell patents (No. 174,46 and dated 7 March 1876 and No. 186,787 dated 30 January 1877) were no longer in effect, although the presiding judges agreed to continue the proceedings due to the case's importance as a "precedent." With a change in administration and charges of conflict of interest (on both sides) arising from the original trial, the U.S. Attorney General dropped the law suit on 30 November 1897 leaving several issues undecided on the merits.

During a deposition filed for the 1887 trial, Meucci also claimed to have created the first working model of a telephone in Italy in 1834. In 1886, in the first of three cases in which he was involved, Meucci took the stand as a witness in the hopes of establishing his invention's priority. Meucci's evidence in this case was disputed due to lack of material evidence of his inventions as his working models were reportedly lost at the laboratory of American District Telegraph (ADT) of New York. ADT did not join with Western Union to become its subsidiary until 1901.

Meucci's patent caveat had described a 'lover's telegraph' which transmitted sound vibrations mechanically across a taut wire, a conclusion that was also noted in various reviews ("The court further held that the caveat of Meucci did not describe any elements of an electric speaking telephone…..", and "The court held that Meucci's device consisted of a mechanical telephone consisting of a mouthpiece and an earpiece connected by a wire, and that beyond this the invention of Meucci was only imagination.") Meucci's work, like many other inventors of the period, was based on earlier acoustic principles and despite evidence of earlier experiments, the final case involving Meucci was eventually dropped upon his death.

Meucci became ill in March 1889, and died on October 18, 1889 in Clifton, Staten Island in New York City.

There exists much dispute over who deserves priority as the first inventor of the telephone, although Alexander Graham Bell was credited with being the first to transmit articulate speech by undulatory currents of electricity.

An Italian researcher in telecommunications, Basilio Catania, and the Federazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica have devoted a Museum to Antonio Meucci making a chronology of his inventing the telephone and tracing the history of the two trials opposing Antonio Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell. They both support the claim that Antonio Meucci was the real inventor of the telephone. However, some scholars outside of Italy do not recognize the claims that Meucci's device had any bearing on the development of the telephone. Tomas Farley also writes that, "Nearly every scholar agrees that Bell and Watson were the first to transmit intelligible speech by electrical means. Others transmitted a sound or a click or a buzz but our boys [Bell and Watson] were the first to transmit speech one could understand."

In 1834 Meucci constructed a kind of acoustic telephone as a way to communicate between the stage and control room at the theatre "Teatro della Pergola" in Florence. This telephone is constructed on the model of pipe-telephones on ships and is still working.

In 1848 Meucci developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat rheumatism. He used to give his patients two conductors linked to 60 Bunsen batteries and ending with a cork. He also kept two conductors linked to the same Bunsen batteries. He used to sit in his laboratory, while the Bunsen batteries were placed in a second room and his patients in a third room. In 1849 while providing a treatment to a patient with a 114V electrical discharge, in his laboratory Meucci is claimed to have heard his patient's scream through the piece of copper wire that was between them, from the conductors he was keeping near his ear. His intuition was that the "tongue" of copper wire was vibrating just like a leave of an electroscope; which means that there was an electrostatic effect. In order to continue the experiment without hurting his patient, Meucci covered the copper wire with a piece of paper. Through this device he heard inarticulated human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (lit. "talking telegraph").

On the basis of this prototype, Meucci is claimed to have worked on more than 30 kinds of telephone. In the beginning he was inspired by the telegraph. Differently from other pioneers of the telephone, such as Charles Bourseul, Philipp Reis, Innocenzo Manzetti and others, he did not think about transmitting voice by using the principle of the telegraph key (in scientific jargon, the "make-and-break" method), but he looked for a "continuous" solution, which means without interrupting the electric flux.

In 1856 Meucci is claimed to have constructed the first electromagnetic telephone, made of an electromagnet with a nucleus in the shape of a horseshoe bat, a diaphragm of animal skin, stiffened with potassium dichromate and keeping a metal disk stuck in the middle. The instrument was hosted in a cylindrical carton box. He supposedly constructed this as a way to connect his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus communicate with his wife who was an invalid. Meucci separated the two directions of transmission in order to eliminate the so-called "local effect", adopting what we would call today a 4-wire-circuit. He constructed a simple calling system with a telegraphic manipulator which short-circuited the instrument of the calling person, producing in the instrument of the called person a succession of impulses (clicks), much more intense than those of normal conversation. As he was aware that his device required a bigger band than a telegraph, he found some means to avoid the so-called "skin effect" through superficial treatment of the conductor or by acting on the material (copper instead of iron). He successfully used an insulated copper plait, thus anticipating the litz wire used by Nikola Tesla in RF coils. In 1864 Meucci is claimed to have produced his "best device", using an iron diaphragm with optimized thickness and tightly clamped along its rim. The instrument was housed in a shaving-soap box, whose cover clamped the diaphragm.

In August 1870, Meucci is claimed to have obtained transmission of articulate human voice at a mile distance by using as a conductor a copper plait insulated by cotton. He called his device "telettrofono". Drawings and notes by Antonio Meucci claimed to be dated September 27, 1870 show that Meucci understood inductive loading on long distance telephone lines 30 years before any other scientists. The painting made by Nestore Corradi in 1858 mentions the sentence "Electric current from the inductor pipe".

It was additionally claimed that about 1873 Bill Carroll from Boston, who had heard news about Meucci's invention, asked him to construct a device to allow divers to communicate with people on the surface. In Meucci's drawing, this device appears to be an electromagnetic telephone, encapsulated to make it waterproof.