George Richmond, a young Lansing dentist, developed a working telephone in 1873, three years before Alexander Graham Bell.
According to a 1983 article by Manuel Castro in Lansing Metropolitan Quarterly, Richmond set up a telephone connection between his home and his office on which he called his wife “hundreds of times” from 1873 to 1875, making careful note of the phone’s performance with each modification.
While perfectionist Richmond tinkered, Bell beat him in the patent race, filing his application in February 1876. However, Richmond’s telephone outperformed Bell’s in long-distance communication. In 1878, a test call from Richmond’s North Lansing office to Detroit came through loud and clear to the man at the other end, Alfred Beamer, a Lansing telegraph agent.
“Beamer, Beamer, do you hear me?” Richmond hollered. “I will sing.” When Richmond launched into “Marching On,” the words were audible 20 feet from the receiver in Detroit.
On April 23, 1878, at age 28, Richmond was granted a patent for his “speaking-telephone transmitter.” He got a lucrative employment offer from the Bell Telephone Co., but declined, counting on local business owners who promised to help him start his own company. Their support never materialized, and Richmond became a historical footnote.
Richmond was also working on a phonograph, naively divulging his materials and methods in journals of the day, when he was shocked to learn that Thomas Edison patented a similar device in 1877.
According to Castro’s article, Richmond died in 1898, at age 48, with “melancholia” listed as the cause of death.
Source : “I Will Sing”, Lansing City Pulse, May 28-June 3, 2014, p.35