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[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.
The author’s acknowledgments are due in an especial manner to Mr.
Albert Stetson, A.M., of Cohasset, Massachusetts, who has given
him much valuable assistance in the collection of information both
in Germany and in this country, and who has also assisted in the
translation of some of the contemporary documents to be found in the
work. To the friends, acquaintances, and pupils of Philipp Reis, and
especially to the surviving members of the family at Friedrichsdorf,
who have most kindly furnished many details of information, the author
would express his most cordial thanks. The testimony now adduced as
to the aim of Philipp Reis’s invention, and the measure of success
which he himself attained, is such, in the author’s opinion, and in
the opinion, he trusts, of all right-thinking persons, to place beyond
cavil the rightfulness of the claim which Reis himself put forward
of being the inventor of the Telephone. Full and sufficient as that
testimony is, much more remains as yet unpublished. The author has, for
example, been permitted to examine a mass of evidence collected by the
Dolbear Telephone Company, which entirely corroborates that which is
here presented. It is, however, for certain reasons beyond the author’s
control, deemed well at the present moment to withhold this testimony
for a little while from publication. The appearance of this volume at
the present time needs no apology from the author. He is conscious that
all he can do will add little or nothing to the lustre with which the
name of Philipp Reis will be handed down to posterity. When the Jubilee
of Philipp Reis comes to be celebrated in 1884 (January 7th), the world
will find out its indebtedness to the great man whose thoughts survive
him.
PHILIPP REIS.
CHAPTER I.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE INVENTOR.
[Compiled chiefly from papers left by the deceased, and from the
biographical notice of the late Professor Schenk.]
Philipp Reis, or, as his full name appears from his autobiographical
sketch to have been, Johann Philipp Reis, was born on the 7th of
January, 1834, at Gelnhausen, in the principality of Cassel. His
father, who belonged to the Evangelical Church, was a master baker,
but also pursued farming to some extent, as the circumstances of small
provincial towns generally require. As his mother had died young, his
paternal grandmother undertook the bringing up of the boy. “While my
father,” writes Herr Reis, “strove constantly to cultivate my mental
powers by instruction concerning the things which surrounded me (by
discussing that which was actually observed), my grandmother turned
her activity to training my disposition and to the development of
the religious sentiments to which she was eminently fitted by the
experiences of a long life, by being well-read, and especially by her
gift of narration.”
On attaining his sixth year the boy was sent to the common school of
his native town. His teachers soon recognised that he possessed no
ordinary endowments, and sought to induce his father to entrust him
later to a higher institution of learning. His father agreed to this;
and the plan was to have been carried out after the boy had passed the
middle-class of the common school. How the father contemplated the
carrying out of the plan is not known; he died ere the son had yet
completed his tenth year.
As a considerable number of children from Frankfort-on-the-Main
and its neighbourhood, attended that time Garnier’s Institute at
Friedrichsdorf, near Homburg, the idea occurred to his guardian and his
grandmother to entrust the boy to this school. He entered there when in
his eleventh year. “The foreign languages, English and French, taught
in the Institute, attracted me specially. The library of the Institute,
rich and well chosen for its size, gave my mind excellent nourishment.”
At the end of his fourteenth year he had passed through the school,
organised as it then was, and he now went to Hassel’s Institute at
Frankfort-on-the-Main. His delight in the study of language induced him
to learn Latin and Italian. And here, also, the taste for the study of
natural sciences and mathematics appears to have been awakened in him.
The lively zeal with which he applied himself to both these disciplines
induced his teachers to advise his guardian that he should allow
the boy to attend the Polytechnic School at Carlsruhe, on finishing
his course at the Institute. “All the endeavours of my well-wishing
teachers shattered themselves, however, against the will of one of
my guardians, who was also my uncle. He wished that I should follow
mercantile pursuits.... I wrote him at that time that I should, indeed,
be obedient and learn the pursuit prescribed for me, but that I should
in any case continue my studies later.”
On the 1st of March, 1850, Philipp Reis entered the colour
establishment of Mr. J. F. Beyerbach, of Frankfort, as an apprentice.
By diligence and punctuality he soon won the esteem of his principal.
All his leisure time he bestowed upon his further education. He took
private lessons in mathematics and physics, and attended the lectures
of Professor R. Böttger, on Mechanics, at the Trade School. And so the
end of his apprenticeship arrived. At the conclusion of it he entered
the Institute of Dr. Poppe, in Frankfort. “Several of my comrades in
this establishment, young people of sixteen to twenty years old, found
it, as I did, a defect that no natural history, history, or geography,
was taught. We determined, therefore, to instruct one another in these
subjects. I undertook geography, and formed from this first occasion of
acting as teacher the conviction that this was my vocation. Dr. Poppe
confirmed me in this view and aided me by word and deed.”
In the year 1851, whilst resident in Frankfort, Reis had become a
member of the Physical Society of that city. This Society, which still
flourishes, then held, and still continues to hold, its meetings in the
Senckenburg Museum. Lectures in Chemistry and Physics are delivered
by resident professors in regular courses every week throughout the
winter, under the auspices of this Society; and every Saturday evening
is devoted to the exposition of recent discoveries or inventions in
the world of physical science, astronomy, etc. The most active members
of this Society during the time of Reis’s connection with it were
the late Professor Böttger, Professor Abbe (now of Jena), and Dr.
Oppel, all of whom contributed many valuable original memoirs to the
_Jahresberichte_, or Annual Reports, published by the Society. Amongst
its corresponding and honorary members it counted the names of all
the best scientific men of Germany, and also the names of Professor
Faraday, Professor Sturgeon, and Sir Charles Wheatstone. Doubtless the
discussion of scientific questions at this Society greatly influenced
young Reis. He remained for three years a member, but dropped his
connexion for a time on leaving Frankfort. He subsequently rejoined
the Society in the session of 1860-61, remaining a member until 1867,
when he finally resigned.
In the winter of 1854-5 we find him most zealously busied with
preparations for carrying out his decision to become a teacher. In
1855, he went through his year of military service at Cassel. Returning
to Frankfort, he worked away with his customary and marvellous energy,
attended lectures on mathematics and the sciences, worked in the
laboratory, and studied books on Pedagogy. “Thus prepared, I set my
mind on going to Heidelberg in order to put the finishing touch to my
education as teacher. I wanted to settle down in Frankfort in this
capacity, and undertake instruction in mathematics and science in
the various schools. Then in the spring of 1858, I visited my former
master, Hofrath Garnier, in whom I had ever found a fatherly friend.
When I disclosed to him my intentions and prospects, he offered me a
post in his Institute. Partly gratitude and attachment, and partly the
ardent desire to make myself right quickly useful, induced me to accept
the proffered post.”
In the autumn of the year 1858 he returned to Friedrichsdorf, and in
September 1859 he married and founded his peaceful home.
Until Easter, 1859, he had but few lessons to give; that he utilised
every moment of his spare time most conscientiously in earnest activity
and sound progress is nothing more than was to be expected from what
has been said above.
It was during this time that Reis undertook the first experimental
researches of an original nature. Working almost alone, and without
any scientific guide, he was led into lines of thought not previously
trodden. He had conceived an idea that electrical forces could be
propagated across space without any material conductor in the same way
as light is propagated. He made many experiments on the subject, the
precise nature of which can never now be known, but in which a large
concave mirror was employed in conjunction with an electroscope and a
source of electrification. The results which he obtained he embodied
in a paper, of which no trace now remains, bearing as its title ‘On
the Radiation of Electricity.’ This paper he sent in 1859 to Professor
Poggendorff for insertion in Poggendorff’s well-known ‘Annalen der
Physik.’ Greatly to his disappointment the memoir was not accepted by
Professor Poggendorff. Its rejection was a great blow to the sensitive
and highly strung temperament of the young teacher; and as will be seen
was not without its consequences.
The other piece of original work undertaken at this time was the
research which resulted in his great invention--the Telephone. From the
brief biographical notes written by the lamented inventor in 1868 we
extract the following:--
“Incited thereto by my lessons in Physics in the year 1860, I
attacked a work begun much earlier concerning the organs of hearing,
and soon had the joy to see my pains rewarded with success, since
I succeeded in inventing an apparatus, by which it is possible to
make clear and evident the functions of the organs of hearing, but
with which also one can reproduce tones of all kinds at any desired
distance by means of the galvanic current. I named the instrument
‘Telephon.’ The recognition of me on so many sides, which has taken
place in consequence of this invention, especially at the Naturalists’
Association (Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher) at Giessen, has
continually helped to quicken my ardour for study, that I may show
myself worthy of the luck that has befallen me.”
His earliest telephones were made by his own hands, in a little
workshop behind his house, whence he laid on wires into an upper
room. He also carried a wire from the physical cabinet of Garnier’s
Institute across the playground into one of the class-rooms for
experimental telephonic communication; and a firmly established
tradition of the school is still preserved, that the boys were afraid
of making a noise in that class-room for fear Herr Reis should hear
them in his place amongst his favourite instruments.
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
disease with which he was already stricken told upon his energies. In
particular the rejection of his earlier researches had preyed upon his
disposition. It is narrated by eye-witnesses still living, how, after
his successful lecture on the Telephone at Giessen, Reis was asked
by Professor Poggendorff, who was present, to write an account of his
instrument for insertion in the ‘Annalen,’ to which request Reis’s
reply was: “_Ich danke Ihnen recht sehr, Herr Professor; es ist zu
spät. Jetzt will_ =ich= _nicht ihn schicken. Mein Apparat wird
ohne Beschreibung in den Annalen bekannt werden._“
Hæmorrhage of the lungs and a loss of voice, which eventually became
almost total, intervened to incapacitate him for work, and especially
from working with the telephone. In 1873 he disposed of all his
instruments and tools to Garnier’s Institute. To Herr Garnier he made
the remark that he had showed the world the way to a great invention,
which must now be left to others to develop. At last the end came. The
annual Report of Garnier’s Institute for the academic year 1873-1874
contains the following brief notice of the decease and labours of
Philipp Reis:--
“At first active in divers subjects of instruction, he soon
concentrated his whole faculties upon instruction in Natural Science,
the subject in which his entire thought and work lay. Witnesses of this
are not only all they who learned to know him in Frankfort, in the
period when he was preparing for his vocation as teacher, but also his
colleagues at the Institute, his numerous pupils, and the members of
the Naturalists’ Association (Naturforscher Versammlung) at Giessen,
who, recognising his keen insight, his perseverance and his rich gifts,
encouraged him to further investigations in his newly propounded
theories. To the Association at Giessen he brought his Telephone. To
the Association at Wiesbaden, in September 1872, he intended to exhibit
a new ingeniously constructed gravity-machine, but his state of health
made it impossible. This had become such during several years, that he
was enabled to discharge the duties of his post only by self-control
of a special, and, as is generally admitted, unusual nature; and the
practice of his vocation became more difficult when his voice also
failed. In the summer of 1873 he was obliged, during several weeks, to
lay aside his teaching. As by this rest and that of the autumn vacation
an improvement in his condition occurred, he acquired new hopes of
recovery, and resumed his teaching in October with his customary
energy. But it was only the last flickering up of the expiring lamp of
life. Pulmonary consumption, from which he had long suffered, laid him
in December upon the sickbed, from which after long and deep pains, at
five o’clock in the afternoon, on the 14th of January, 1874, he was
released by death.”
The closing words of his autobiographical notes, or “_curriculum
vitæ_,” as he himself styled them, were the following:--
“As I look back upon my life I can 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.”
In 1877, when the Magneto-Telephones of Graham Bell began to make their
way into Europe, the friends of Philipp Reis were not slow to reclaim
for their deceased comrade the honours due to him. In December 1877, as
the columns of the _Neue Frankfurter Presse_ show, a lecture was given
upon the history of the Telephone, at the Free German Institute, in
Frankfort, by Dr. Volger, its President, the same who in 1863 had shown
the Telephone to the Emperor of Austria. On that occasion the Telephone
of Reis’s own construction, presented by him to the Institute after his
exhibition of it in 1862, was shown.
Early in 1878 a subscription was raised by members of the Physical
Society of Frankfort for the purpose of erecting a monument to the
memory of their former colleague. This monument, bearing a portrait
medallion, executed by the sculptor, Carl Rumpf, was duly inaugurated
on Sunday, December 8, 1878, when an appropriate address was pronounced
by the late Dr. Fleck, of Frankfort. The ‘Jahresbericht,’ of the
Physical Society for 1877-78 (p. 44), contains the following brief
record:--
“The Society has erected to the memory of its former member,
the inventor of the Telephone, Philipp Reis (deceased in 1874),
teacher, of Friedrichsdorf (see ‘Jahresbericht,’ 1860-61, pp.
57-64; and 1861-62, p. 13), in the cemetery of that place,
a monument which was inaugurated on the 8th of December,
1878. This monument, an obelisk of red sandstone, bears in
addition to the dedication, a well-executed medallion portrait
of Philipp Reis, modelled by the sculptor, A. C. Rumpf, and
executed galvanoplastically by G. v. Kress.”
The inscription on Reis’s monument in the Friedrichsdorf Cemetery is:--
[Illustration:
HIER RUHT
PHILIPP REIS
GEB. 7. JANUAR 1834
GEST. 14. JANUAR 1874
SEINEM VERDIENSTVOLLEN
MITGLIEDE
DEM ERFINDER DES
TELEPHONS
DER PHYSIKALISCHE VEREIN
ZU
FRANKFURT-A-M.
ERRICHTET
1878
]
PRINCIPAL DATES IN REIS’S LIFE.
1834 January 7 Philipp Reis born.
1850 March 1 Apprenticed to Beyerbach.
1855 Year of Military Service at Cassel.
1858 Settled in Friedrichsdorf.
1859 September 14 Married.
1860 Invented the Telephone.
1861 October 26 Read Paper “On Telephony by the
Galvanic Current” before the Physical
Society of Frankfort-on-the-Main.
" November Read Paper to the Physical Society
of Frankfort-on-the-Main, entitled
“Explanation of a new Theory
concerning the Perception of Chords
and of Timbre as a Continuation
and Supplement of the Report on
the Telephone.”
1861 December Wrote out his Paper “On Telephony,”
as printed in the ‘Jahresbericht.’
1862 May 8 Notice in ‘Didaskalia’ of Reis’s
invention.
" May 11 Lectured and showed the Telephone
to the Free German Institute
(Freies Deutsches Hochstift) in
Frankfort-on-the-Main.
" Article on the Telephone, communicated
by Inspector Von Legat to the
Austro-German Telegraph Society,
and subsequently printed in its
‘Zeitschrift’ (Journal).
1863 July 4 Showed his improved Telephone to
the Physical Society of Frankfort-on-the-Main.
" September 6 Reis’s Telephone shown to the Emperor
of Austria and the King of
Bavaria, then visiting Frankfort.
" Sept. 17-24 Meeting of the “Deutscher Naturforscher”
at Stettin; Reis’s Telephone
shown there by Professor
Böttger.
1864 February 13 Meeting of the “Oberhessische Gesellschaft
für Natur- und Heilkunde”
at Giessen; Lecture by
Professor Buff, and exhibition by
Reis of his Telephone.
" September 21 Meeting of the “Deutscher Naturforscher”
at Giessen. Reis gave
an explanation of the Telephone
and the history of its invention,
and exhibited it in action before
the most distinguished scientific
men of Germany.
1872 September Meeting of the “Deutscher Naturforscher”
at Wiesbaden; Reis
announced to show his “Fallmaschine,”
but prevented by ill-health.
1874 January 14 Philipp Reis died.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.
Monument to Philipp Reis in the Cemetery at Friedrichsdorf.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An autograph letter of Philipp Reis to Mr. W. Ladd, the well-known
instrument maker of Beak Street, London, describing his telephone, is
still preserved, and is now in possession of the Society of Telegraph
Engineers and Electricians of London. It is reproduced at p. 81.
[2] As to the difference in quality of the instruments, see the
testimony of the maker, Albert of Frankfort, on p. 44. Prof. Pisko (see
p. 101) seems to have had a peculiarly imperfect instrument.