Meucci Triangle

Ave U, 86 St. and W. 12 St.

Brooklyn

Directions via Google Maps

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

This park honors 19th century inventor and Staten Island resident Antonio Meucci (1808-1889). Meucci developed the first working model of the telephone in 1857 after spending several years experimenting with sound transmission via electrically charged copper wire.

Antonio Meucci worked for 15 years as a superintendent of mechanics at the Tacon Opera House in Havana, Cuba before coming to New York in 1850. Here he engaged in several business ventures and scientific experiments, and he gave safe haven to the popularly supported Italian guerilla leader Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) in his home (which is now open to the public in Staten Island). In 1871, he obtained his first provisional patent for the telephone from the United States Patent Office. He renewed the patent twice more on the appropriate date, but in 1874, lacking the requisite $10 filing fee, failed to obtain a renewal.

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