Telecommunication
The conventional telephone was invented independently by Alexander Bell and Elisha Gray in 1876. Antonio Meucci invented the first device that allowed the electrical transmission of voice over a line in 1849. However Meucci's device was of little practical value because it relied upon the electrophonic effect and thus required users to place the receiver in their mouth to "hear" what was being said. The first commercial telephone services were set-up in 1878 and 1879 on both sides of the Atlantic in the cities of New Haven and London.
Henry Sutton (inventor)
After reading of Bell's 1876 announcement of the invention of the telephone, Sutton had designed about twenty different telephones within a year. Sutton was said to have "believed in the free flow of information as a gift to science … patented little, although sixteen of his twenty original telephone designs were patented by others overseas".