The point at issue, and for which justice has been invoked, and of which ample proof is given in these pages, is not whether Philipp Reis invented _a_ telephone--that is not denied--but whether Philipp Reis invented _the_ Telephone. The irony of fate, not to say the curious ignorance which is often called by a less polite name, has decreed by the mouth of popular scientific writers, of eminent engineers, and of accomplished barristers, that Reis’s invention was not an instrument for transmitting human speech at all--was not intended even for this--that it was a purely musical instrument in its inception, and that it has always so remained. These clever persons begin to persuade themselves of this view, and forthwith invent a question-begging epithet, and dub the instrument as a mere “_tone-telephone_”! If some unprejudiced person ventures to speak of Reis’s instrument as having, as a matter of history, transmitted speech, all the contemptuous reply that he gets from the eminent somebody, who poses as an authority for the moment, is: _Oh, but, you know, it was only a tone-telephone, a musical toy, and when some one was singing to it you fancied you caught the words of the song which, during singing, were occasionally projected along with the music. I’ve always regarded the accounts of its transmission of speech as a good joke; all it could possibly do was occasionally to utter an articulate noise in combination with a musical tone. Besides, you know, Mr. Reis was a musical man, who only intended it to sing, and if it spoke it only spoke by accident; but such an accident never did or could occur, because the construction of it shows that it not only did not but could not transmit speech. If Mr. Reis had really penetrated the fundamental principle of the articulating telephone, he would have arranged his instruments very differently; and then, you know, if he really had transmitted speech the discovery would have attracted so much attention at the time. Moreover, if he had meant it to talk, he would have called it the articulating telephone, and not a telephone for transmitting tones, you know; no one before Graham Bell ever dreamed of using a tympanum to catch articulate sounds, or had he done so he would have been laughed at._ To all such clap-trap as this--and there has been enough _ad nauseam_ of such--the one reply is silence, and a mute appeal to the original writings of Reis and his contemporaries, and to the tangible witness of inexorable scientific facts. All the most important of these will be found in their appropriate places. They amply establish the following points:-- I.--Reis’s Telephone _was expressly intended to transmit speech_. II.--Reis’s Telephone, _in the hands of Reis and his contemporaries, did transmit speech_. III.--Reis’s Telephone _will transmit speech_.