Gardiner Greene Hubbard in Washington
Gardiner Greene Hubbard was one of the most ambitious and driven businessmen and residents that Washington had ever seen. A lawyer by training, he was the patriarch of both the Hubbard and Bell families, the father of the Bell Telephone Company, the founder of the National Geographic Society, as well as a real estate speculator.
In 1873, Hubbard moved to Washington from Cambridge, Massachusetts to lobby for the nationalization of the telegraph system and for the legislation that was named for him, the Hubbard bill. In order to break Western Union’s monopoly on telegraphic communications, Hubbard needed patents on breakthrough communication technologies that he then planned on offering to the government, such as the capability of sending multiple messages simultaneously on a single telegraph wire.
While Hubbard was busy lobbying in Washington, an unknown Canadian inventor and speech therapist, Alexander Graham Bell, was working at the Mass…
