Invention of the telephone
The carbon microphone was independently developed around 1878 by David Edward Hughes in England and Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison in the US. Although Edison was awarded the first patent in mid-1877, Hughes had demonstrated his working device in front of many witnesses some years earlier, and most historians credit him with its invention.
Micrometer
The first documented development of handheld micrometer-screw calipers was by Jean Laurent Palmer of Paris in 1848; the device is therefore often called "palmer" in French, "tornillo de Palmer" ("Palmer screw") in Spanish, and "calibro Palmer" ("Palmer caliper") in Italian. (Those languages also use the "micrometer" cognates: "micromètre, micrómetro, micrometro".) The micrometer caliper was introduced to the mass market in anglophone countries by Brown & Sharpe in 1867, allowing the penetration of the instrument's use into the average machine shop. Brown & Sharpe were inspired by several earlier devices, one of them being Palmer's design. In 1888 Edward W. Morley added to the precision of micrometric measurements and proved their accuracy in a complex series of experiments.