ts. It raked
together all possible claimants to priority, from Philip Reis to Elisha
Gray, in its attempts to discredit Bell as the inventor. The Western
Union had only one legitimate advantage--the Edison transmitter--which
was unquestionably much superior to anything which the Bell Company
then possessed. Many Bell stockholders were discouraged in face of this
fierce opposition and wished to abandon the fight. Not so Vail. The mere
circumstance that the great capitalists of the Western Union had
taken up the telephone gave the public a confidence in its value which
otherwise it would not have had, a fact which Vail skillfully used in
attracting influential financial support. He boldly sued the Western
Union in 1878 for infringement of the Bell patents. The case was a
famous one; the whole history of the telephone was reviewed from the
earliest days, and the evidence as to rival claimants was placed on
record for all time. After about a year, Mr. George Clifford, perhaps
the best patent attorney of the day, who was conducting the case for the
Western Union, quietly informed his clients that they could never
win, for the records showed that Bell was the inventor. He advised the
Western Union to settle the case out of court and his advice was taken.
This great corporation war was concluded by a treaty (November 10, 1879)
in which the Western Union acknowledged that Bell was the inventor,
that his patents were valid, and agreed to retire from the telephone
business. The Bell Company, on its part, agreed to buy the Western Union
Telephone System, to pay the Western Union a royalty of twenty per cent
on all telephone rentals, and not to engage in the telegraph business.
Had this case been decided against the Bell Company it is almost certain
that the telephone would have been smothered in the interest of the
telegraph and its development delayed for many years.

Soon after the settlement of the Western Union suit, the original group
which had created the telephone withdrew from the scene. Bell went back
to teaching deaf-mutes. He has since busied himself with the study of
airplanes and wireless, and has invented an instrument for transmitting
sound by light. The new telephone company offered him $10,000 a year as
chief inventor, but he replied that he could not invent to order. Thomas
Sanders received somewhat less than $1,000,000 and lost most of it
exploiting a Colorado gold mine. Gardiner Hubbard withdrew from business
a