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Johann Philipp Reis (January 7, 1834 -- January 24, 1874), was
born in Gelnhausen, Germany, as son
to a Jewish baker. He was self-taught scientist and
inventor who constructed one of the first working telephones. (See Reis' telephone).
Philipp Reis' mother died while he was an infant, so he was raised by his paternal grandmother, a well-read, intelligent and
religious woman.
At the age of six Philipp Reis was sent to the common school of his home town of Gelnhausen, in Cassel. Here his talents
attracted the notice of his instructors, who advised his father to extend his education at a higher college. His father died
before his son was ten years old; but his grandmother and guardians placed him at Garnier's Institute, in Friedrichsdorf, where
he showed a taste for languages, and acquired both French and English, as well as a stock of miscellaneous information from the
library. At the end of his fourteenth year he passed to Hassel's Institute, at Frankfurt am Main, where he picked up Latin and Italian. A love of science now began to show itself, and his
guardians were recommended to send him to the Polytechnic School of Karlsruhe;
but one of them, his uncle, wished him to become a merchant, and on March 1, 1850, Philipp Reis was apprenticed to the colour
trade in the establishment of J.F. Beyerbach, of Frankfurt, against his own will. He told his uncle that he would learn the
business chosen for him, but should continue his proper studies by-and-by.
By diligent service he won the esteem of Beyerbach, and devoted his leisure to self-improvement, taking private lessons in
mathematics and physics, and
attending the lectures of Professor R. Bottger on mechanics at the Trade School. When his apprenticeship ended he attended the
Institute of Dr. Poppe, in Frankfurt. As neither history nor geography was taught there, several of the students agreed to
instruct each other in these subjects. Philipp Reis undertook geography, and believed he had found his true vocation in the art
of teaching. He also became a member of the Physical Society of Frankfurt.
In 1855 he completed his year of military service at Kassel, then returned to Frankfurt to qualify himself as a teacher of
mathematics and science by means of private study and public lectures. His intention was to finish his training at the University of Heidelberg, but in the spring of 1858 he
visited his old friend and master, Hofrath Garnier, who offered him a post in Garnier's Institute. On 14th of September, 1859 was
married, and shortly after he moved to Friedrichsdorf, to begin his new career as a teacher.
Philipp Reis imagined that electricity could be propagated through space, as light can, without the aid of a material
conductor, and he performed some experiments on the subject. The results were described in a paper, "On the Radiation of
Electricity," which, in 1859, he posted to Professor Poggendorff; for insertion in the then well-known periodical, Annalen
der Physik. The manuscript was declined, to the great disappointment of the sensitive young teacher.
Philipp Reis had studied the organs of hearing, and the idea of an apparatus for transmitting sound by means of electricity
had been floating in his mind for years. Incited by his lessons on physics, he attacked the problem, and was rewarded with
success. In 1860, he constructed the first prototype of a telephone, covering a
distance of 100 m. He was not able to get people interested in his invention, however, and it was largely forgotten, except by
Alexander Graham Bell, who demonstrated and patented an
improved version of Philipp Reis' apparatus in 1876.
In 1862 he again tried Poggendorff, with an account of his "Telephon" as he called it; but his second offering was rejected
like the first. The learned professor, it seems, regarded the transmission of speech by electricity as a chimera; but Philipp
Reis, bitterly, attributed the failure to his being "only a poor schoolmaster."
Since the invention of the telephone, attention has been called to the fact that, in 1854, M. Charles Bourseul, a French
telegraphist, had conceived a plan for conveying sounds and even speech by electricity. "Suppose," he explained, "that a man
speaks near a movable disc sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice; that this disc alternately makes
and breaks the currents from a battery: you may have at a distance another disc which will simultaneously execute the same
vibrations.... It is certain that, in a more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by electricity. I have made
experiments in this direction; they are delicate and demand time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a
favourable result."
Bourseul deserves the credit of being perhaps the first to devise an electric telephone and try to make it; but Philipp Reis
deserves the honour of first realising the idea as a practical device.
Bourseul's idea seems to have attracted little notice at the time, and was soon forgotten. Even the Count du Moncel, who was
ever ready to welcome a promising invention, evidently regarded it as a fantastic notion. It is very doubtful if Philipp Reis had
ever heard of it. He was led to conceive a similar apparatus by a study of the mechanism of the human ear, which he knew to
contain a membrane vibrating due to sound waves, and communicating its vibrations through the hammer-bone behind it to the
auditory nerve. It therefore occurred to him, that if he made a diaphragm to imitate this membrane and caused it, by vibrating,
to make and break the circuit of an electric current, he would be able through the magnetic power of the interrupted current to
reproduce the original sounds at a distance.
In 1837-1838 Professor Page, of Massachusetts, had discovered that a needle or thin bar of iron, placed in the hollow of a
coil or bobbin of insulated wire, would emit an audible 'tick' at each interruption of a current, flowing in the coil, and that
if these separate ticks followed each other fast enough, by a rapid interruption of the current, they would run together into a
continuous hum, to which he gave the name of 'galvanic music.' The pitch of this note would correspond to the rate of
interruption of the current. From these and other discoveries which had been made by Noad, Wertheim, Marrian, and others, Philipp
Reis knew that if the current which had been interrupted by his vibrating diaphragm were conveyed to a distance by a metallic
circuit, and there passed through a coil like that of Page, the iron needle would emit a note like that which had caused the
oscillation of the transmitting diaphragm. Acting on this knowledge, he constructed his rudimentary telephone. This prototype is
now in the museum of the Reichs Post-Amt, Berlin.
Another of his early transmitters was a rough model of the human ear, carved in oak, and provided with a drum which actuated a
bent and pivoted lever of platinum, making it open and close a springy contact of platinum foil in the metallic circuit of the
current. He devised some ten or twelve different forms, each an improvement on its predecessors, which transmitted music fairly
well, and even a word or two of speech with more or less perfection. But the apparatus failed as a practical means of talking to
a distance.
The discovery of the microphone by Professor Hughes has enabled us to understand the reason of this failure. The transmitter
of Philipp Reis was based on the plan of interrupting the current, and the spring was intended to close the contact after it had
been opened by the shock of a vibration. So long as the sound was a musical tone it proved efficient, for a musical tone is a
regular succession of vibrations. But the vibrations of speech are irregular and complicated, and in order to transmit them the
current has to be varied in strength without being altogether broken. The waves excited in the air by the voice should merely
produce corresponding waves in the current. In short, the current ought to undulate in sympathy with the oscillations of
the air. It appears from the report of Herr Von Legat, inspector of the Royal Prussian Telegraphs, on Philipp Reis' telephone,
published in 1862, that the inventor was quite aware of this principle, but his instrument was not well adapted to apply it. No
doubt the platinum contacts he employed in the transmitter behaved to some extent as a crude metal microphone, and hence a few
words, especially familiar or expected ones, could be transmitted and distinguished at the other end of the line. But Philipp
Reis does not seem to have realised the importance of not entirely breaking the circuit of the current; at all events, his metal
spring is not in practice an effective provision against this, for it allows the metal contacts to jolt too far apart, and thus
interrupt the current. Had he lived to modify the spring and the form or material of his contacts so as to keep the current
continuous--as he might have done, for example, by using carbon for platinum--he would have forestalled alike Bell, Edison, and
Hughes in the production of a good speaking telephone. Philipp Reis in fact was trembling on the verge of a great discovery,
which was, however, reserved for others.
His experiments were made in a little workshop behind his home at Friedrichsdorff; and wires were run from it to an upper
chamber. Another line was erected between the physical cabinet at Garnier's Institute across the playground to one of the
class-rooms, and there was a tradition in the school that the boys were afraid of creating an uproar in the room for fear that
Philipp Reis would hear them with his "telephon".
The new invention was published to the world in a lecture before the Physical Society of Frankfort on October 26, 1861, and a
description, written by himself for the Jahresbericht, a month or two later. It excited a good deal of scientific notice
in Germany; models of it were sent abroad, to London, Dublin, Tiflis, and other places. It became a subject for popular lectures,
and an article for scientific cabinets. Reis obtained a brief renown, but the reaction soon set in. The Physical Society of
Frankfort turned its back on the apparatus which had given it lustre. Philipp Reis resigned his membership in 1867; but the Free
German Institute of Frankfort, which elected him an honorary member, also slighted the instrument as a mere "philosophical toy".
At first it was a dream, and now it is a plaything. Have we not had enough of that superior wisdom which is another name for
stupidity? The dreams of the imagination are apt to become realities, and the toy of to-day has a knack of growing into the
mighty engine of to-morrow.
Reis believed in his invention, even if no one else did; and had he been encouraged by his fellows from the beginning, he
might have brought it into a practical shape. But rebuffs had preyed upon his sensitive heart, and he was already stricken with
consumption. It is related that, after his lecture on the telephone at Giessen, in
1854, Poggendorff, who was present, invited him to send a description of his instrument to the Annalen. Philipp Reis
answered him, "Ich danke Ihnen Sehr, Herr Professor, aber es ist zu spät. Jetzt will ICH ihn nicht schicken. Mein Apparat wird
ohne Beschreibung in den Annalen bekannt werden". (Translated, this means "Thank you very much, Professor, but it is too
late. I shall not send it now. My apparatus will become known without any writing in the Annalen.)
Later, Philipp Reis confined his teaching and study to matters of science; but his bad health become a serious impediment. For
several years it was only by the exercise of a strong will that he was able to carry on his duties. His voice began to fail as
the disease gained upon his lungs, and in the summer of 1873 he was obliged to forsake tuition during several weeks. The autumn
vacation strengthened his hopes of recovery, and he resumed his teaching with his wonted energy. But this was the last flicker of
the expiring flame. It was announced that he would show his new gravity-machine at a meeting of the Deutscher Naturforscher of
Wiesbaden in September, but he was too ill to appear. In December he lay down, and, after a long and painful illness, breathed
his last at five o'clock in the afternoon of January 14, 1874.
In his Curriculum Vitae he wrote: As I look back upon my
life I call indeed say with the Holy Scriptures that it has been "labour and sorrow." But I have also to thank the Lord that He
has given me His blessing in my calling and in my family, and has bestowed more good upon me than I have known how to ask of Him.
The Lord has helped hitherto; He will help yet further.
Philipp Reis was buried in the cemetery of Friedrichsdorff, and in 1878, after the introduction of the speaking telephone, the
members of the Physical Society of Frankfort erected an obelisk of red sandstone bearing a medallion portrait over his grave.
Documents in the London Science Museum show, that, in 1947, engineers from the
British firm Standard
Telephones and Cables (STC) found, that Philipp Reis's device dating from 1863 could
transmit and "reproduce speech of good quality but of low efficiency".
Sir Frank Gill, then chairman of STC, ordered, that the tests be kept secret, as STC was negotiating with the AT&T, which had evolved from the Bell Company of Alexander Graham Bell. Bell was generally accepted to have invented the telephone, and Gill
thought that evidence to the contrary might disrupt the negotiations.
Besides Philipp Reis and Bell, Antonio Meucci and Elisha Gray both invented similar devices. Meucci was officially recognized as
inventor of the telephone on September 25, 2001, by the US Congress.
External links
References
Much of the above was adapted from John Munro's Heroes of the Telegraph published in 1891.
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