Seth Shulman

and the process by which Alexander Graham Bell was awarded priority over Elisha Gray is where things start to get really interesting.

According to Seth Shulman, author of the 2008 book, The Telephone Gambit, Bell's 1876 patent application for the telephone was highly unusual in that it represented a significant departure from his earlier work.

Bell's research notes on March the 8th shift to some strikingly new ideas after months of slow, incremental work.

On that day, for the first time, Bell inexplicably adds to his experiments a dish of water laced with sulfuric acid.