ANTONIO MEUCCI (1808-1889), Born in Florence, but died in NYC. Industrial chemical engineer who participated in the Italian Liberation Movement, spending 1833-34 in prison. In 1835, already married to Esterre Mochi, he decided to leave Italy and settle first in Cuba, then Spanish, working at the Gran Teatro de Tacón, applying one of the electrical practices, galvanization. Influenced by the German doctor Franz Anton MESMER (1734-1815), who maintained that there is animal magnetism, and that diseases could be cured by applying electricity and magnetism, MEUCCI tried practices to combat his wife’s rheumatism, to communicate with her who came to a state of prostration, he developed the telephone.