In June 2002, an irresistible piece of news traveled around the world: the United States Congress had declared that Antonio Meucci, not Alexander Graham Bell, invented the telephone. Except it had not.

The House passed a nonbinding resolution honoring Meucci and acknowledging his “work in the invention of the telephone”. It did not name him the sole inventor, and the Senate never approved it. That distinction stood little chance against the headline version: America had taken the telephone away from Bell.

Canada answered ten days later. Its House of Commons unanimously affirmed that Bell, who had conducted early experiments in Ontario, was the inventor. For a moment, two neighboring legislatures were issuing rival versions of technological history.

And Meucci’s claim was substantial enough to keep the argument alive. After moving from Havana to Staten Island in 1850, he created a communications link between his laboratory and the bedroom of his ailing wife, Ester. He demonstrated a device in 1860 and filed a patent caveat in 1871 but could not afford a full application. Bell received his patent in 1876. How closely Meucci’s devices resembled Bell’s practical telephone remains disputed.

The House debate was far less cautious. Lawmakers called Meucci the “true inventor”.. The late Representative Bill Pascrell described a poor immigrant, hindered by limited English, who was lucky to receive even a footnote in American history. The sponsor, Staten Island Representative Vito Fossella, opened by listing the contributions of Italian Americans.

The campaign was less about rewriting a patent than claiming space in the national story.

Meucci offered a familiar figure: an immigrant whose intelligence survived poverty and difficulty navigating his new country, while the credit went elsewhere.

Neither chamber could decide the history by resolution. Each could decide whom it wanted history to remember. The careful language remains in the official records. The simpler verdict – an Italian invented the telephone – is the one that traveled.