Alexander Graham Bell: Improvement in Telegraphy, US Patent 174,465

Edition

Scan of the printed patent, US174465.pdf of Google Patents (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/10/ab/a3/b4f5c6e5826640/US174465.pdf, six 1-bit pages at 300 dpi: two sheets of drawings and four pages of specification), the same page images as the USPTO copy (image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/0174465). The text was read line by line from the scan: an OCR of each column served as a base, every line was corrected against the page images, and the result was compared word by word with the Google Patents OCR text, whose differences were checked again on the scan (that OCR omits the passage from “number of transmitting-instruments, having” to “result from”, checked twice against the scan). The printed heading lines are in the header of the poster: “UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.” in the kicker, “ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS.” as the author line, “IMPROVEMENT IN TELEGRAPHY.” as the title, in upper and lower case and without its period, and the line “Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 174,465, dated March 7, 1876; application filed February 14, 1876.” (legible on the scan) as the byline, without its period. Page numbers and running heads (2, 3, 4, 174,465) are dropped. Words divided at a line end are joined without the hyphen, except receiving-instruments, line-wire, electro-magnet (hyphenated within lines elsewhere in the text) and zero-line (its only occurrence, kept as a compound like line-wire); “unnec essary”, divided at a line end without a hyphen, is joined as “unnecessary”. Reference letters are in italic and the superscript figures of A¹, A², B¹, B², C¹, C² are kept, as printed. Broken types are read as the intended letter: “inductive” (printed like “inductivo”), and the italic c of “When the armature c, Fig. 5”, whose tail is damaged. The word “Sound” in “Sound-vibrations” is set in a different type on the scan, apparently a repair, and is kept with its capital; the stop after “by wind” is damaged and read as a period. The names in capitals and small capitals (the inventor in the preamble, the witnesses) are set in small capitals; the signature “ALEX. GRAHAM BELL,” keeps its comma. The two sheets of drawings are cropped to their drawn area, set side by side with a gap as one image, kept in black and white, and cleared of a few specks in the right margin of the second sheet.

Rights

A United States patent published on 7 March 1876: in the United States, it was published before 1931, and the USPTO states that the text and drawings of a patent are typically not subject to copyright. In France, its author, Alexander Graham Bell, died on 2 August 1922 (Wikidata Q34286), before 1 January 1956.

The USPTO states: “Subject to limited exceptions reflected in 37 CFR 1.71(d) & (e) and 1.84(s), the text and drawings of a patent are typically not subject to copyright restrictions.” (https://www.uspto.gov/terms-use-uspto-websites, section Patent information, retrieved 2026-09-27)