American Bell Telephone Co. v. Molecular Telephone Co.
| Decision Date | 24 June 1885 |
| Citation | 32 F. 214 |
| Parties | AMERICAN BELL TELEPHONE CO. and others v. MOLECULAR TELEPHONE CO. and others. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Edward N. Dickerson and Chauncy Smith, for plaintiffs.
Wheeler H. Peckham, for defendants.
Infringement is alleged of the fifth claim of the patent granted to Alexander Graham Bell, No. 174,465, bearing date March 7 1876, for improvements in telegraphy, and of the fifth sixth, seventh, and eighth claims of the patent granted to Bell, No. 186,787, bearing date January 30, 1877, for improvements in electric telephony. The fifth claim of the first patent is for 'the method of, and apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically, as herein described, by causing electrical undulations similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds, substantially as set forth. ' The scope of the invention thus claimed, and the construction which the claim should receive, were considered and decided in the cases of Telephone Co. v. Spencer, 8 Fed.Rep. 509 and Telephone Co. v. Dolbear, 15 F. 448, by the circuit court for the District of Massachusetts. In the Spencer Case it was held by LOWELL, J., that Bell 'discovered a new art, that of transmitting speech by electricity, and has a right to hold the broadest claim for it which can be permitted in any case; not to the abstract right of sending sounds by telegraph, without any regard to means, but to all means and processes which he has both invented and claimed. ' It was also held that the essential elements of the method are the production of what the patent calls 'undulatory vibrations of electricity,' to correspond with those of the air, and transmitting them to a receiving instrument, capable of echoing them; and that an apparatus in which the transmitter was made on the principle of the microphone was an infringement of the fifth claim of the patent. In Dolbear's Case, it was held by GRAY, J., that the invention claimed is not merely the apparatus described, but also the general process or method by which the human voice produces, in a current of electricity, a succession of electrical disturbances, not sudden and intermittent or pulsatory, but gradual, oscillatory, vibratory, or undulatory, so as to give out at the further end of the conducting wire sounds exactly corresponding in loudness, in pitch, and in tone, character or quality, to the sounds committed to it at the nearer end.
The defendants use a telephone apparatus consisting of a speaking microphone transmitter and a magneto-receiver. The defense upon which they principally rely is that their apparatus is substantially such as was made by Reis, of Germany, in 1860, and described in numerous publications before the date of Bell's invention; and they insist that, if the fifth claim of the patent is not void for want of novelty, in view of its anticipation by Reis, its scope is restricted, and that the claim and method of Bell is confined to apparatus in which a magneto-transmitter is used; and upon this construction, as they use a microphone transmitter, they insist that they do not infringe.
In the Spencer Case the Reis instrument was relied upon to defeat the patent, or limit the construction of the fifth claim. It was said of his apparatus, in that case, by Judge LOWELL, that 'the regret of all its admirers was that articulate speech could not be sent and received by it.
The deficiency was inherent in the principle of the machine. * * * A century of Reis would never have produced a speaking telephone, by mere improvement in construction. ' Unless the evidence, so far as it relates to this branch of the defense, materially distinguishes the case from the Spencer Case, the decision there should be controlling, and it would be unseemly, when the parties can resort to an appellate tribunal for review, to disregard the rule of comity which should prevail between courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction.
Additional testimony has been introduced by the defendants to show that the Reis apparatus is a speaking telephone, although the inventor never supposed it to be capable of transmitting articulate speech, and although it has always been conceded, by the most eminent authorities, to be incapable of doing so, until some of the experts in the present case have brought themselves to a different opinion. Reis himself undoubtedly believed that the transmitter in his apparatus acted by making and breaking the electric circuit; and it is conceded that an apparatus operating upon this principle is not capable of the transmission of musical sounds.
Bell's method consisted in employing an undulatory current of electricity, in contradistinction to an intermittent or pulsatory one. He was not the first to employ the so-called undulatory current of electricity, but he was the first to utilize it for copying and transmitting air vibrations exactly corresponding, in amplitude, rate, and form, to those produced by the human voice. His discovery was that these vibrations could be transmitted and copied by the use of such a current, and his invention consisted in devising suitable apparatus for producing the undulations upon a line-wire, and communicating the vibrations to this current at one end of the wire, and reproducing them at the other end. It is essential that such apparatus should not operate to interrupt or break the electric current, but shall operate by means of a practically continuous electric current, or circuit. Bell pointed out different ways of generating the undulatory current, as by a vibrating armature in front of an electro-magnet, or by varying the resistance in the electric current, but these were not of the essence of his invention.
The microphone, according to Prof. Hughes, 'introduces into an electric circuit an electrical resistance which varies in exact accord with sonorous vibrations, so as to produce an undulatory current of electricity from a constant source, whose wave-length, height, and form is an exact representation of the sonorous waves.'
As early as in 1854, Bourseul described essentially the apparatus made by Reis in 1861. He said:
'Could there now be invented a metallic plate which should be so movable and pliable that it reproduces all the vibrations of tones like the air, and should this plate be so connected with an electric current that it should alternately make and break the electric current according to the air vibrations by which it is affected, it would thereby be possible also to arrange electrically a second similarly constructed metal plate, so that it would repeat simultaneously exactly the same vibrations as the first plate, and it would then be exactly the same as if one had spoken in the immediate vicinity against the second plate, or the ear would be affected precisely as if it had received the tones directly through the first metallic wall.'
Several modifications of the apparatus devised by Reis are described by Legat, Pisco,...
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...509. This court, in American Bell Telephone Co. v. Molecular Telephone Co., followed the construction thus placed upon the claim. 23 Blatchf. 253, 32 F. 214. proofs for the complainant show that the apparatus, which it is alleged has been used and offered for sale by the defendants, embodie......
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...on the infringement of claim 5 of patent No. 174,465, and of claims 3, 5, 6, and 7, of patent No. 186,787, is ordered. --------- Notes: [1] 32 F. 214. [2] Dolbear v. Telephone Co., 8 S.Ct. 785. [3] Id. 778. --------- ...