Antonio Meucci, born in Florence and settled in Staten Island (New York), develops from 1849 a voice transmission system over electric cable and files a caveat (pre-patent declaration of invention) at the US Patent Office in 1871, describing his "teletrofono." Unable to pay the $10 annual fee to renew the caveat, he abandons it in 1874. Alexander Graham Bell registers the telephone patent on 14 February 1876 at the same company — Western Union — where Meucci had deposited his prototypes, which disappeared. The US Congress formally recognized in Resolution 269 (11 June 2002) that Antonio Meucci was the inventor of the telephone and that his work preceded Bell's. The coincidence that Bell patented at the same company that held Meucci's models, and the disappearance of those models, supports the 'appropriated' classification.