Where was the telephone invented and who invented it?

Actually there is strong evidence that the telephone may have been invented in New Brunswick.  While Alexander Graham Bell may have been successful in obtaining the patent, he was not the first to send and receive messages over the wires.  William McLeod, an inventor of note who lived in the Sussex New Brunswick area had made and used a telephone before 1861.  It connected his house and shop and was in use for many years.  He also generated electricity, made his own camera, a clock which recorded the months, days, hours, minutes and seconds; and a large compass for woodsmen.

There were farmers on the Kingston Peninsula that put a wire between the house and barn in the 1870s to communicate. And little independent telephone companies began to be established throughout the Maritimes by the end of the 19th century.  Even as late as 1966 there were still 120 independent telephone companies in Nova Scotia, some serving as few as 50 customers.

Alexander Graham Bell is attributed as the inventor of the telephone because he was the first person to successfully obtain a patent for it.  He claimed that the telephone was invented in Canada, but made in the United States.  

In August, 1870, His father and mother moved to Brantford Ontario from Scotland and England.  They chose the rural area of Ontario, thinking that it would be a healthy surrounding for their 23 year old son who was sickly at the time.  Both his older and younger brothers had died of tuberculosis.   Alexander recovered after eight months of country living and went on to work at the Boston School for the Deaf.  On a visit back to the Ontario farm in July, 1874, Alexander sketched out the plans for his phone and his father kept a copy of it.  This was the reason that he claimed that the phone was invented in Canada.  Of course, Italy claims that Antonio Meucci invented the telephone, and Germany maintains that it was Johann Reis.  The U.S. House of Representatives even passed a resolution in 2002 maintaining that it was Reis that made contributions in the invention of the telephone.

Mark J Brewer, Host