Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, full stop. He shouted 'Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you' into his contraption and the modern world started ringing. One inventor, one eureka, one device.
Bell won the patent, which is not quite the same as inventing the telephone alone. He filed on 14 February 1876, the very same day as another inventor, Elisha Gray, and the two designs were strikingly similar, sparking decades of dispute over who really got there first and whether Bell's team saw Gray's filing. Earlier still, the Italian Antonio Meucci had demonstrated a voice-transmitting device and filed a cheaper provisional 'caveat' in 1871 but could not afford to renew it; in 2002 the US Congress passed a resolution recognising his contribution. The telephone, like most big inventions, was an idea whose time had come, chased by several people at once. Bell got the patent, the credit, and the company. He was a real pioneer, but the lone-genius version erases a crowded, litigious race that he happened to win by a nose.