Only economic difficulties kept Meucci from exploiting and renewing his patent, which expired.
It was Bell who reaped great economic advantages from his invention; even though he was not effectively the inventor of the telephone, as he has always been considered by most people, he must be credited with the great merit of having favoured its development and diffusion on the wave of the great impression he had made, even among scientists, with the device he demonstrated during the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876.
Sir William Thomson (1824-1907), who had visited the exposition, was so deeply impressed that at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the same year presented Bell's invention as a wonder of wonders and praised Bell for his daring in finding such a simple solution to such a complex problem.
The later telephone, which Bell had improved, differed from the first one only in the shape of the transmitter, which was identical to the receiver.