Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was born in San Frediano, low-class area of the city of Florence, on April 13, 1808, while the city is under Napoleon rule. His family is poor and, even if he is admitted to the Art School [Accademia di Belle Arti], he cannot end his studies as he needs to start working very young. He changes many jobs, from custom employee propman for the “Pergola” theater in Florence. Here he builds an acoustic telephone: that is a telephone in which sound is conducted inside tubes. In the “Pergola” he meets Ester Mochi, a costumer, which he will marry.

1808–
1889) was an Italian inventor and also a friend and associate of the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi.[1][2] Meucci is best known for developing a voice communication apparatus which several sources credit as the first telephone.[3][4]
Meucci set up a form of voice communication link in his Staten Island, N.Y., home that connected its second floor bedroom to his laboratory.[5] He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound by undulatory electric current.

Early life

Meucci was born at Via dei Serragli 44 in the San Frediano borough of Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, (now in the Italian Republic), on 13 April 1808, as the first of nine children to Amatis Meucci and Domenica Pepi.[6] Amatis was at times a government clerk and a member of the local police, and Domenica was principally a homemaker. Four of Meucci's siblings did not survive childhood.[2]
In November 1821, at the age of 15, he was admitted to Florence Academy of Fine Arts as its youngest student, where he studied chemical and mechanical engineering.[7] He ceased full-time studies two years later due to insufficient funds, but continued studying part-time after obtaining employment as an assistant gatekeeper and customs official for the Florentine government.[8] Meucci later became employed at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as a stage technician, assisting Artemio Canovetti.[9]
In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro della Pergola. This telephone was constructed on the principles of pipe-telephones used on ships and still functions.[10]
He married costume designer Esterre Mochi, who was employed in the same theatre, on 7 August 1834.[11]

Meucci was alleged to be part of a conspiracy involving the Italian unification movement in 1833–1834, and was imprisoned for three months with Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi.[9][dead link