Frederick A.Gower was the first of these.

He was an adventurous chevalier of business who gave up an agent's contract in return for a right to become a roving propagandist.
Later he met a prima donna, fell in love with and married her, forsook telephony for ballooning, and lost his life in attempting to fly across the English Channel.
Next went William H.Reynolds, of Providence, who had bought five-eights of the British patent for five thousand dollars, and half the right to Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Italy for two thousand, five hundred dollars.

How he was received may be seen from a letter of his which has been preserved.

"I have been working in London for four months," he writes; "I have been to the Bank of England and elsewhere; and I have not found one man who will put one shilling into the telephone." Bell himself hurried to England and Scotland on his wedding tour in 1878, with great expectations of having his invention appreciated in his native land.

But from a business point of view, his mission was a total failure.