Innocenzo Manzetti

Innocenzo Vincenzo Bartolomeo Luigi Carlo Manzetti (; 17 March 1826 – 15 March 1877) was an Italian inventor born in Aosta. Following his primary school studies, he went to the Jesuit-run Saint Bénin Boarding School and then on to Turin, where he was awarded a diploma in land surveying before returning to Aosta.

Inventions

Automaton

In 1840, he constructed a flute-playing automaton, in the shape of a man, life-size, seated on a chair. Hidden inside the chair were levers, connecting rods, and compressed air tubes, which made the automaton's lips and fingers move on the flute according to a program recorded on a cylinder similar to those used in player pianos. The automaton was powered by clockwork and could perform 12 different arias. As part of the performance, it would rise from the chair, bow its head, and roll its eyes.

Later, he managed to get his automaton to play any piece performed by a musician on an organ by muting the organ's keys and connecting them to the automaton's fingers. A complex automaton was described in the same 1865 news article that described Manzetti's telephone.

Speaking telegraph (telephone)

In 1843, Manzetti first mooted the idea of a "speaking telegraph", or telephone, but didn't pursue the idea at the time. In 1864, to give his automaton the power of speech, Manzetti is reported to have invented his speaking telegraph—some reports state that he didn't actually get it working until the following year. Although he did not patent his device, it was reported in Paris, The article very briefly wrote of an electrical telephone that could reproduce music and loudly spoken vowels with good quality, but could only produce softly spoken speech, confusingly.

"It was also rumoured that English technicians to whom Manzetti illustrated his method for transmitting spoken words on the telegraph wire intended to apply the invention on several private telegraph lines in England."

Suggestions of the alleged intellectual property theft appear unsubstantiated, as there were no historical records of English technicians or companies implementing 'speaking telegraphs' in the U.K., or elsewhere, in that period. The United Kingdom did not see its first telephone demonstrations until A.G. Bell demonstrated one of his early devices to Queen Victoria and others in 1877. Well-documented sources record that Bell first conceptualized and invented electrical telephony in Canada in July 1874, and did not actually build a working model until March 1876, thus mooting the suggestion of the invention's theft from Manzetti by Bell or others although contacts between Bell and Meucci prior to Bell's patent filings are confirmed.

Miscellaneous inventions

Other machines invented by Manzetti included: geodetic instruments that he needed for his work as a surveyor a bicycle a piano a special pantograph for the reproduction of bas-reliefs on ivory, marble or wood a telescope with three converging lenses that allowed the user to observe a movement at a distance of more than a pendulum watch which would work for one year on a single winding.

Family

Manzetti married Rosa Sofia Anzola in 1864. His first daughter, Maria Sofia, died in 1867 at the age of two. Manzetti himself died in Aosta on his 51st birthday, poor and largely unrecognized, one year after the death of his second and last daughter, Marina Fortunata.