Whose invention was the telephone?

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone, receiving the first US patent for it in 1876 and famously making the first call to his assistant with the words Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you. However, the invention was surrounded by controversy: Elisha Gray filed a similar patent caveat on the very same day, and the Italian inventor Antonio Meucci had demonstrated a voice-transmitting device years earlier but could not afford to maintain his patent caveat. Bell went on to found the Bell Telephone Company, which grew into one of the largest corporations in the world. The legal battles over the telephone patent were among the most contested in history.