Produced by Chris Curnow, Chris Jordan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [Illustration: MEDALLION AND AUTOGRAPH FROM MONUMENT TO PHILIPP REIS AT FRIEDRICHSDORF.] PHILIPP REIS: INVENTOR OF THE TELEPHONE. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, WITH DOCUMENTARY TESTIMONY, TRANSLATIONS OF THE ORIGINAL PAPERS OF THE INVENTOR AND CONTEMPORARY PUBLICATIONS. BY SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, B.A., D.Sc., PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, BRISTOL. [Illustration] LONDON: E. & F. N. SPON, 16, CHARING CROSS. NEW YORK: 35, MURRAY STREET. 1883. PREFACE. The title of this little work sufficiently indicates its nature and scope. The labour of preparing it has not been slight, and has involved the expenditure of much time in prosecuting inquiries both in this country and in Germany amongst the surviving contemporaries of Philipp Reis. To set forth the history of this long-neglected inventor and of his instrument, and to establish upon its own merits, without special pleading, and without partiality, the nature of that much-misunderstood and much-abused invention, has been the aim of the writer. The thought that he might thus be of service in rendering justice to the memory of the departed worthy has inspired him to his task. He has nothing to gain by making Reis’s invention appear either better or worse than it really was. He has therefore preferred to let the contemporary documents and the testimony of eye-witnesses speak for themselves, and has added that which seemed to him desirable in the way of argument in the form of four appendices.