In 1862 Reis sent once again to Professor Poggendorff a memoir, this time on the Telephone. This, in spite of the advocacy of Professor Böttger and of Professor Müller of Freiburg, both of whom wrote, was declined by Professor Poggendorff, who treated the transmission of speech by electricity as a myth. Reis, who was convinced that the rejection was because he was “only a poor schoolmaster,” was more deeply pained than ever. Of the various public exhibitions of the Telephone given by Reis in the years 1861 to 1864, much will be found in the latter part of this book in which the contemporary notices are reprinted. The first public lecture was in 1861, before the Physical Society of Frankfort (see p. 50), the last the above-mentioned occasion at Giessen (see p. 93) in 1864. By this time Reis’s invention was becoming widely known. In addition to his own lectures on the subject, the Telephone had been the subject of lectures in various parts of Germany. It was lectured upon by Professor Buff in Giessen twice, by Professor Böttger both in Frankfort and in Stettin; by Professor H. Pick, by Professor Osann of Würtzburg, by Professor Paul Reis of Mainz, and by others. In 1863 Reis’s Telephone was shown by Dr. Otto Volger, Founder and President of the Free German Institute (Freies Deutsches Hochstift), to the Emperor of Austria and to King Max of Bavaria, then on a visit to Frankfort. Telephones were being sent to various parts of the world. They were to be found in the Physical Laboratories of Munich, Erlangen, Wiesbaden, Vienna, and Cologne. They were sent to distant parts of the world, to London,[1] to Dublin, to Tiflis in the Caucasus. In Manchester, before the Literary and Philosophical Society, Reis’s Telephone was shown in 1865 by Professor Clifton, who, however, from not having Reis’s own original memoirs on the subject before him, utterly mistook--if the Journal of Proceedings be not in error--the nature of the instrument, and not knowing the theory of vibration of the tympanum so beautifully demonstrated by Reis, imagined the instrument to be a mere harmonic telegraph for transmitting code signals in fixed musical tones! Telephones, too, were becoming an article of commerce and, good and bad,[2] were being bought for the purpose of placing them in collections of scientific apparatus. The invention was, however, too soon for the world. To Reis’s great disappointment, the Physical Society of Frankfort took no further notice of the invention, the lustre of which shone upon them. He resigned his membership in the Society in October 1867. The Free German Institute of Frankfort, to which Reis had next betaken himself, though electing him to the dignity of honorary membership, left the invention aside as a philosophic toy. The Naturalists’ Assembly, including all the leading scientific men of Germany, had indeed welcomed him at Giessen; but too late. The sensitive temperament had met with too many rebuffs, and the fatal