Ring the changes

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, right? Wrong, says the US House of Representatives, which this week passed a resolution crediting an obscure Italian inventor who died in poverty 113 years ago. “The life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged,” says the resolution. It explains how Meucci, an Italian émigré, invented the “teletrofono” and demonstrated it in 1860. His working models were reportedly lost by a lab Meucci shared with Bell at the Western Union company. The Scotsman won a patent on the phone 26 years…