The Edison National Historical Park (ENHP) archives has seven bound volumes and one pamphlet of Patent Office proceedings relating to conflicting claims over who invented the telephone. Four of these volumes contain the record of a group of interferences entitled Cases A through L and Case No. 1. The disputant parties were Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, A. E. Dolbear, J. W. McDonough, George B. Richmond, William L. Voelker, J. H. Irwin, and Francis Blake, Jr. Although Edison's preliminary statements were filed in September 1878, testimony was not taken until 1880. This record was printed in 1881.
The second volume contains Edison's exhibits, including photo-lithographs of laboratory drawings, patents and patent applications, and newspaper and journal articles. The drawings have exhibit numbers corresponding to a page/volume numbering scheme used by Edison and his patent attorney Lemuel W. Serrell in 1880 when Edison's technical notes and drawings were numbered and examined for possible inclusion as exhibits in these interferences. Many of the documents in this numbered series were not selected as exhibits; they remain in the archives at the Edison National Historical Park. (See Unbound Notebooks, Volumes 8-18.)
This volume has been selected in its entirety, except for the following fifteen printed Edison patents.
141,777 -- Relay Magnets (1873)158,787 -- Telegraph Apparatus (1875)198,088 -- Telephonic Telegraphs (1877)198,089 -- Telephonic or Electro Harmonic Telegraphs (1877)186,330 -- Acoustic Electric Telegraphs (1877)198,087 -- Telephonic Telegraphs (1877)182,996 -- Acoustic Telegraphs (1876)185,507 -- Electro Harmonic Multiplex Telegraph (1876)208,299 -- Speaking Telegraph (1878)203,014 -- Speaking Telegraph (1878)203,015 -- Speaking Telegraph (1878)203,013 -- Speaking Telegraph (1878)203,018 -- Telephone or Speaking Telegraph (1878)203,016 -- Speaking Machines (1878)221,957 -- Telephone (1879)
Numerous exhibits from the Telephone Interferences were published in The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, Vols. 2-4 [TAEB 2-4]. In some cases, the arrangement of the individual pages within a document in TAEB differs from the arrangement in the exhibit volume. In such instances, the browsing order of the exhibit volume corresponds to the order in TAEB. For the sake of completeness, one page from Notebook, Vol. 17 has been added to the images that constitute TAEB 3, Doc. 1062. Courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.