a Scottish inventor best known as the first person to patent the telephone and bring telephone services successfully to the marketplace. Some historians credit the Italian-American Antonio Meucci with the actual invention—he filed a patent caveat for a telephone device in December of 1871. Bell’s telephone grew out of improvements he made from his "harmonic telegraph," which could send more than one message at a time over a single telegraph wire. Bell's first telephone patent was granted on March 7, 1876. Three days later he and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, located in different rooms, tested the new type of transmitter described in his patent. Watson heard Bell's voice saying, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." The first telephone company, Bell Telephone Company, was founded on July 9, 1877. It would later become one of the largest telecommunications corporations. Adding to the controversy over Meuuci’s and Bell’s work, Elisha Gray, a professor at Oberlin College, applied for a caveat of the telephone on the same day Bell applied for his patent of the telephone. Bell got to the patent office first, so the U.S. Patent Office awarded Bell with the first patent for a telephone.