- "He's the Italian-American who invented the telephone, he did it one year before Alexander Graham Bell."
- ―Joey Zasa[src]
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was an Italian inventor and also a friend and associate of the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi. Meucci is best known for developing a voice-communication apparatus which several sources credit as the first telephone.
Meucci set up a form of voice-communication link in his Staten Island home that connected its second-floor bedroom to his laboratory. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat. Therefore Alexander Graham Bell went on to become the more widely known inventor of the telephone.
Meucci Foundation[]
Despite this, many still regarded Meucci as the inventor of the telephone, notably the Meucci Association, who handed out awards to top Italian-Americans, notably Michael Corleone in 1979. Their president at this time was Joey Zasa.
