Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone: A Biographical Sketch — John Shaqi
Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone: A Biographical SketchThompson, Silvanus P. (Silvanus Phillips)
History
Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone: A Biographical Sketch
Thompson, Silvanus P. (Silvanus Phillips)
Reis, Philipp, 1834-1874; Telephone -- History
The experiments by him some months ago in the Physical Society, were,
to the astonishment of all, exceedingly plain and clear, whereas the
experiment following the lecture of yesterday was less successful. This
was due partly to the poor conductivity of the wires, partly to the
locality.
Although much is still left to be done for the practical utilisation
(Verwerthung) of the telephone, yet a new and interesting field of
labour is hereby opened to physics.
[No more complete report than the foregoing is to be found, and it is
believed that the discourse, which like all those given by Reis was
delivered extempore, was never committed to writing. Its resemblance to
the discourse of the preceding autumn before the Physical Society is
great; and indeed it may be said that all Reis’s discourses upon the
telephone were practically identical in their contents. A few months
after this lecture, Reis presented a pair of instruments, transmitter
and receiver, to the Hochstift. These instruments were not the same as
those used by Reis at his lecture, but were of the “improved” type,
whilst those used by Reis at his lecture to the Hochstift, were, so far
as respects the transmitter at least, more like the form described by
W. von Legat, and figured in Plate II., Fig. A;[24] and according to
Mr. Horkheimer, who helped Reis on this occasion, the transmitter was
provided with a conical mouthpiece of wood. The transmitter presented
later by Reis is of the “square-box” form (Fig. 17), and is stamped,
“1863, Philipp Reis, 2,” and the receiver is of the “knitting-needle”
form (Fig. 23). These instruments are carefully preserved by the
Hochstift in the “Goethehaus,” amongst their archives “in everlasting
remembrance” of the inventor. A few months later, in 1863, the Emperor
of Austria and the late king Max of Bavaria were residing at Frankfurt
and visited the “Goethehaus;” and on this occasion Reis’s instruments
were shown to these distinguished visitors by the Founder and President
of the Hochstift, Dr. Volger.
In honour of his brilliant invention Reis was, shortly after his
lecture, elected an honorary member of the Freies Deutsches Hochstift.]
* * * * *
[The next document in order is a Report by Wilhelm von Legat,
communicated to the Austro-German Telegraph Union (Verein) in 1862, and
printed in the ‘Journal’ of that Society. It was reprinted verbatim
in Dingler’s ‘Polytechnisches Journal,’ for 1863, vol. clxix. p. 29.
This Report is of great importance. It is quoted by Graham Bell, in
his earliest account of _his_ telephone. It was this Report, moreover,
which in 1875 or 1876, in a translated manuscript form, was put into
Mr. Edison’s hands by the then President of the Western Union Telegraph
Company, and which formed the starting-point of Edison’s subsequent
work.]
[=5.=] ON THE REPRODUCTION OF TONES IN THE ELECTRO-GALVANIC WAY.
By V. LEGAT, Inspector of the Royal Prussian Telegraphs in Cassel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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