THE CLAIM OF THE INVENTOR.
In the present century, when so many facilities exist for the
diffusion of knowledge, and when every new discovery and invention is
eagerly welcomed and immediately noised abroad to every country of
the globe, it is hard to believe that the inventor of an instrument
of the highest scientific value, destined to play an important part
in social and commercial life, should have been suffered to live and
die in unrecognised obscurity. Still harder is it to believe that his
invention passed into almost complete oblivion, unacknowledged by most
of the leading scientific men of his day and generation. But hardest
of all is it to believe that when at last attempts were made to give
to him, whose name and fame had thus been permitted to languish, the
credit of the splendid researches in which he wore his life away, those
attempts could be met on the one hand by an almost complete apathy, and
on the other by a chorus of denial, not only that any such invention
was made, but that the inventor had ever intended to invent anything
of the kind. Yet nothing less than this has happened. Philipp Reis,
the inventor of the Telephone, the first to scheme, and carry out
into execution, an instrument for conveying to a distance by means
of electric currents the tones of human speech and human song, is no
longer amongst the living. He cannot reclaim for himself the honours
that have been showered upon the heads of others, who, however worthy
of those honours they were--none will deny that--were only not the
first to deserve them. In his quiet grave, in the obscurity of the
German village where his daily work was done, he sleeps undisturbed
by the strife of tongues. To him it matters nothing now, whether his
genius be recognised and his invention applauded, or whether ignorance,
and calumny, and envy, alike decry both. Nevertheless, the memory of
him and of his work will live, and will descend to posterity as of
one whom his own generation knew not, whose peculiar greatness passed
unheeded save by a chosen few. Nor will posterity be the less ready
to accord _honour_ to him who in his own day could not even obtain
justice. Yet something more than a mere historic justice for the poor
schoolmaster of Friedrichsdorf does the world owe; justice to the great
invention that is now imperishably associated with his name: justice to
the struggling family whom, instead of enriching, it impoverished; and,
not least, the justice of patience, whilst the story of his life and
work, and the words he himself has written thereupon, are unfolded.
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_.
Before proceeding to discuss these three points we will pause for a
moment, first to clear away a lurking verbal fallacy, then to point out
the partial historic acknowledgment already conceded to Reis’s claims.
Reis did not call his instrument an “_articulating telephone_.”
Neither did he call it a “_tone telephone_.” He called it simply
“_The Telephone_” (Das Telephon),[6] as will be seen in his own first
memoir (p. 57). He did speak of his instrument again and again as an
instrument “_for reproducing tones_.” But it must be remembered that
the German word _Ton_ (plural _Töne_) used by Reis is more nearly
equivalent to our English word “sound,” and includes articulate as well
as musical tones, unless the context expressly indicates otherwise. So
that when Reis talked of the _Reproduction of Tones_ he was using words
which did not limit his meaning to musical tones, as indeed his memoirs
show in other ways. He started from a consideration of the mechanical
structure of the human ear, and endeavoured to construct an instrument
on those lines because the ear can take up _all_ kinds of tones. Reis
was not so foolish as to imagine that the construction of the human
ear was solely designed for musical, to the exclusion of articulate
tones. We are not aware that the epithet, Tone-Telephone, was ever
applied to Reis’s instruments until it became advisable(!) to seek a
means of disparaging an old invention in order to exalt a new one. And
it is a curious point that the true musical “tone-telephones,” _i.e._
instruments designed expressly to transmit specific musical tones for
the purpose of multiple telegraphy, were invented (by Varley, Gray, La
Cour, Graham Bell, and Edison) long after Reis’s Telephone, between
the years 1870 and 1876. All these were dependent practically upon the
tuning-fork system of vibration, whereas Reis’s system was based on the
tympanum of the ear. To classify Reis’s invention with these would be
absurd.
Having shown the fallacy bound up in the term “tone-telephone,” we will
dismiss the point with the remark that henceforth it will be a waste of
time to argue with any person who applies that question-begging epithet
to Reis’s invention.
Partial historic acknowledgments of Reis’s claims as inventor of The
Telephone have been made from time to time by those best qualified to
speak.
Mr. Edison, the inventor of the famous lamp-black button transmitter,
which he christened later as “The Carbon Telephone,” has himself
stated in his account of his inventions,[7] that he was started upon
this line of investigation by having put into his hand, by the late
Hon. Mr. W. Orton, a manuscript translation of Legat’s Report on
Reis’s Telephone, given in the Journal of the Austro-German Telegraph
Union (see Translation, p. 70). So that he was, therefore, aware at
least of this: that in Reis’s instruments “single words uttered, as
in reading, speaking, and the like, were perceptible indistinctly,
nevertheless, here also the inflexions of the voice, the modulations of
interrogation, exclamation, wonder, command, etc., attained distinct
expression.” So far as Mr. Edison is concerned, therefore, Reis is his
starting-point by his own direct avowal.
Professor Graham Bell has not failed to acknowledge his indebtedness to
Reis, whose entry “into the field of telephonic research” he explicitly
draws attention to by name, in his “Researches in Electric Telephony,”
read before the American Academy of Sciences and Arts, in May 1876, and
repeated almost verbatim before the Society of Telegraph Engineers,
in November 1877. In the latter, as printed at the time, Professor
Bell gave references to the researches of Reis, to the original paper
in Dingler’s ‘Polytechnic Journal’ (see Translation, p. 61); to the
particular pages of Kuhn’s volume in Karsten’s ‘Encyclopædia’ (see
p. 106), in which diagrams and descriptions of two forms of Reis’s
Telephone are given; and where mention is also made of the success
with which exclamatory and other articulate intonations of the voice
were transmitted by one of these instruments; and to Legat’s Report,
mentioned above (and given in full on p. 70). Professor Bell has,
moreover, in judicial examination before one of the United States
Courts expressly and candidly stated,[8] that whilst the receivers of
his own early tone-telephones were constructed so as to respond to one
musical note only, the receiver of Reis’s instrument, shown in Legat’s
Report (as copied in Prescott’s ‘Speaking Telephone,’ p. 10), and given
on p. 109 of this work, was adapted to receive tones of any pitch, and
not of one tone only. It is further important to note that in Professor
Bell’s British Patent he does not lay claim to be the inventor, but
only the improver of an invention: the exact title of his patent is,
“_Improvements_ in Electric Telephony (Transmitting or causing sounds
for Telegraphing Messages) and Telephonic Apparatus.”
So far as Professor Bell is concerned, therefore, he is guiltless of
stigmatising the Reis instrument as a mere “tone-telephone.”
Professor Dolbear, the inventor of the “Static Receiver” form of
Telephone, is still more explicit in avowing Reis’s claim. In the
report of his paper on “the Telephone,” read, March 1882, before the
Society of Telegraph Engineers and of Electricians[9] we find: “The
speaker could testify that the instrument would talk, and would talk
well. The identical instruments employed by Reis would do that, so
that Reis’s transmitters would transmit. Secondly, his receiver would
receive; and Reis did transmit and receive articulate speech with such
instruments.”
As far as Professor Dolbear is concerned, therefore, he admits in
unequivocal terms the whole claim of Reis to be the inventor of _The
Telephone_.
Count du Moncel, author of a work on the Telephone, which has run
through several editions, though he has classified Reis’s instrument
as a mere “tone-telephone,” has recently admitted[10] that he was,
until the year 1882, ignorant of some of Reis’s instruments and of his
original papers. He has, moreover, added these words: “Nevertheless, it
would not be just not to acknowledge that the Reis Telephone _formed
the starting-point of all the others_;” also these significant lines:
“It is probable that in this matter, as in the greater number of
modern inventions, the _original inventor_ obtained only insignificant
results, and that it was the man who first succeeded in arranging his
apparatus so as to obtain really striking results that received the
honour of the discovery and rendered it popular.”
So far as the Count du Moncel is concerned, therefore, the claims of
Philipp Reis to be the inventor of the telephone are admitted, though
hesitatingly, to be historically just.
We now return to the proof of the three points previously enunciated.
I.--Reis’s Telephone was expressly intended to transmit speech.
Reis’s first instrument was (see p. 16) nothing else than a model of
the mechanism of the human ear. Why did he choose this fundamental
type which runs through all his instruments from first to last? The
reason is given in his own first memoir (p. 51), “_How could a single
instrument reproduce at once the total actions of all the organs
operated in human speech? This was ever the cardinal question._” Reis
constructed his instrument therefore with intent to reproduce human
speech. For this reason he borrowed from the ear the suggestion of a
_tympanum_. Of the operation of the tympanum he had the most exact
and perfect conception. He says (p. 54), “_Every tone, and every
combination of tones_”--and this includes articulate tones, of course,
and is just as true of them as of any other kind--“_evokes in our ear,
if it enters it, vibrations of the drum-skin, the motions of which may
be represented by a curve_.” And further: “_As soon, therefore, as
it shall become possible, at any place and in any prescribed manner,
to set up vibrations whose curves are like those of any given tone,
or combination of tones, we shall then receive the same impression
as that tone or combination of tones would have produced upon us._”
Again, it is clear that his study of acoustics led him to employ
the tympanum, because of its special value in responding to all the
complex vibrations of human speech. It is no less significant that
when a decade later Varley, Gray, and Bell, set themselves to invent
tone-telephones for the purpose of multiple telegraphy, they abandoned
tympanums as being _unsuitable_ for tone-telephones, and in lieu
thereof employed vibrating tongues like those of tuning-forks. Reis’s
use of the tympanum had a very definite meaning then; it meant nothing
less than this: I intend my instrument to transmit any sound that a
human ear can hear. That it was explicitly within his intention to
transmit speech is confirmed by another passage of his first memoir
(p. 58), wherein he remarks with a shade of disappointment that though
“the consonants are for the most part tolerably distinctly reproduced,
the vowels are not yet to an equal degree.” To his own pupils and
co-workers he communicated his ideas. One of the former, Mr. E.
Horkheimer, now of Manchester, expressly says (see p. 117) that Reis’s
intention was to transmit speech, and that the transmission of music
was an afterthought adopted for the convenience of public exhibition,
just as was the case with the public exhibitions of Bell’s Telephone
fifteen years later.
Nor did this imperfection cause Reis to hide his intentions from
the world. He modestly claimed such success as he had obtained, and
left the rest. In 1863 he drew up a Prospectus (given in extenso on
p. 85), which was printed to accompany the instruments which were
sold; and of which copies are still extant. In this document he says:
“Besides the human voice, according to my experience, there can also
be reproduced the tones of good organ pipes, from F to c''', and those
of a piano.” In this same Prospectus (p. 87) occur the instructions
for the use of the signal call by which the listener communicates his
wishes to the speaker. Those instructions run: “One beat = _sing_; two
beats = _speak_.” Can any sane person doubt that Reis intended his
instrument to transmit speech, when such directions stand printed in
his own Prospectus? Legat’s Report (1862) speaks of Reis’s instrument
as intended (see p. 77) to speak, and further describes the use of an
elliptic cavity to which the listener can apply his ear. Kuhn (1866)
(see p. 106) says that the square-box transmitter (Figs. 17, 18)
did not send speech well, and complains that he could only get from
it an indistinguishable noise. Doubtless he spoke too loudly, Pisko
(1865) speaks of the Reis instrument as intended for speaking (p.
105). Further, in the letter which Reis wrote in 1863 to Mr. W. Ladd,
of London, he expressly emphasises by underscoring the word that his
Telephone can transmit “_any_ sound” that is sufficiently loud, and
he refers to the speaker and listener at the two ends of the line as
“the correspondents.” The only reply henceforth possible to any person
who shall assert that Reis’s Telephone was not expressly intended to
transmit articulate speech is the good honest retort: _impudentissime
mentiris_.
II.--Reis’s Telephone, in the hands of Reis and his contemporaries, did
transmit speech.
Of the performance of his instruments Reis speaks modestly and
carefully, nothing extenuating of his failures, nothing exaggerating
of his successes. I shall not attempt to be wiser than he; nor seek
to make out his instrument to have been either more perfect or more
reliable than he himself knew it to be. The membrane tympanum of
his transmitter was liable to become relaxed by the moisture of the
breath rendering the instrument--as Graham Bell found fifteen years
later with his membrane magneto-transmitters--uncertain in its action.
Moreover, in some earlier forms of Reis’s transmitter, notably those
with a vertical tympanum, the adjustment of the contact-points that
controlled the current was a matter of delicacy requiring experience
and practice, so that casual experimenters failed to obtain the results
which Reis himself obtained;[11] they obtaining only a noisy snarl
where he obtained intelligible speech. Lastly, the very delicacy of the
essential parts, the conducting strips of metal which lay lightly in
contact against one another, militated against a uniformity of success
when tried with different voices, some of which were too low to produce
any effect, others so loud as to rattle the delicate contact-pieces in
a manner fatal to the attainment of the desired result.
In spite of all these drawbacks, which were not inherent in the
principle of the instrument, there is plenty of evidence that _Reis’s
Telephone did transmit speech_. Reis himself records this fact:
(1.) In 1861, in his memoir ‘On Telephony’ (see p. 58), “_The
consonants are for the most part tolerably distinctly reproduced, but
the vowels not yet in an equal degree._”
(2.) In his ‘Prospectus’ (p. 86) Reis says that the tones of
organ-pipes and of the piano can be reproduced as well as the tones of
the human voice, “_according to my experience_.”
(3.) The fact is attested by Inspector Wilhelm von Legat, in his
Report in the ‘Zeitschrift’ (p. 77), 1862. After alluding to the
indistinctness of the vowels, he says: “_Single words, uttered as
in reading, speaking, and the like, were perceptible indistinctly,
nevertheless, here also the inflexions of the voice, the modulations of
interrogation, exclamation, wonder, command, etc., attained distinct
expression._”
(4.) Professor Quincke, of Heidelberg, testifies (see p. 113) that he
heard and understood words spoken through a Reis Telephone in 1864.
(5.) Professor Böttger, editor of the ‘Polytechnisches Notizblatt,’ in
1863 says (see p. 90): “The experimenters could even communicate words
to one another, though certainly indeed, only such as had often been
heard by them.”
(6.) Dr. Rudolph Messel, an old pupil of Reis, and an eye-witness of
his early experiments, has written[12]: “There is not a shadow of a
doubt about Reis having actually achieved imperfect articulation. _I
personally recollect this very distinctly_, and could find you plenty
more people who witnessed the same.”
(7.) Herr Peter, a former colleague of Philipp Reis, whose testimony
will be found on page 126, narrates how he doubted the powers of the
instrument until he had verified them for himself by speaking into it
words which could not possibly be premeditated.
(8.) Mr. E. Horkheimer, who aided Reis in his earlier work, though he
left Germany when the development of the instrument was yet very far
from complete, has even given (see p. 117) a list of the words and
expressions which he has heard transmitted by the earlier forms of the
instrument.
(9.) Herr Philipp Schmidt, brother-in-law of Philipp Reis, and
now acting-paymaster in the Imperial German Navy at Wilhelmshavn,
says: “he succeeded finally in reproducing at a distance, words and
whole sentences.” “There never was any understanding between my
brother-in-law and myself as to particular words and sentences: on the
contrary, these were quite spontaneous.”
(10.) Mr. S. M. Yeates, of Dublin, who in 1865 constructed a modified
Reis Telephone (see p. 128), has thus described the performance of the
instrument: “Before disposing of the apparatus, I showed it at the
November meeting (1865) of the Dublin Philosophical Society, when both
singing _and the distinct articulation of several words were heard
through it, and the difference between the speakers’ voices clearly
recognised_.”[13]
It is difficult to conceive how testimony on this point could be
stronger. From so many different sources it is alike agreed that--with
the instrument presumably in good adjustment--_Reis’s Telephone_, in
the hands of Reis and his contemporaries, _did transmit articulate
speech_.
III.--Reis’s Telephone will transmit speech.
Reis’s Telephone consists of two parts: a “transmitter,” into which
the speaker speaks; and a “receiver,” at which the hearer listens.
Their various forms have been described in detail in the preceding
chapter. All that we are concerned with at this place is, whether these
instruments will at the present day do what is asserted. The writer
has tested every form of Reis’s transmitter, save only some of the
tentative historic forms shown in Figs. 2-8, 13, 15, & 16, _ante_,
and has found them perfectly competent to transmit speech, provided
proper precautions were taken: namely, that the contacts were clean
and in adjustment, that the tympanum was tightly stretched, and that
the speaker did not speak too loudly:[14] in other words, that the
instruments were properly used. Any one who wants _not to succeed_ in
transmitting speech with Reis’s transmitter has only to neglect these
reasonable precautions. It is not, therefore, difficult to fail. The
writer has also tested both the better-known forms of Reis’s receiver
(Figs. 21, 22, & 23), and finds that both are perfectly competent to
receive speech electrically and reproduce it audibly, both vowels
and consonants being perfectly distinct and articulate, though never
as loud as in more modern forms of telephone-receiver. From a steel
wire, magnetised, as prescribed by Reis, by surrounding it with a coil
of wire through which the current passes, the writer has obtained
articulation exceeding in perfection of definition, both of vowels and
of consonants, the articulation of any other telephone-receiver he
has ever listened to. Perhaps it may be objected that it is difficult
to listen to a steel wire. Reis met this difficulty in his own way
by mounting his steel wire upon a small sounding-box to strengthen
the sounds, and added a flat upper case against which the ear of the
listener can be pressed, and which can be removed, or opened as a
lid, when a whole audience is to hear simultaneously the tones of
the instrument when working in a loud and disagreeable manner, as a
transmitter of the coarser vibrations of a loudly sung melody. The
lid is not wanted for this latter purpose--is an encumbrance; which,
nevertheless, by its presence proves the more delicate functions of
the instrument. Reis’s instructions in his ‘Prospectus,’ p. 86, are
that pressing this lid down firmly upon the steel core increases the
loudness of the sounds. Any one who wants _not to succeed_ in receiving
speech with Reis’s receiver has, as before, only to neglect reasonable
precautions. He has only to use an imperfect or bad transmitter, or use
it carelessly, or put the receiver to a sufficient distance from his
ear, to attain this result. There are people who have failed to make
Reis’s receiver receive.
This is not the place to discuss a doctrinaire objection sometimes
raised, that it is theoretically impossible for Reis’s instruments to
work. For the moment we are concerned with the practical question: Do
they work? No one practically experienced in telephones, even if he
should deny that Reis had any such intention, will dispute that they
can now be made to transmit speech. Professor Dolbear, himself no mean
authority on telephones, testifies, as quoted above (p. 41), “that _the
instruments would talk, and would talk well_.” He would, indeed, be a
bold man who would come forward to deny what can be shown any day as an
experimental fact: that _Reis’s Telephone will transmit speech_.
We have now shown that Philipp Reis was the undisputed inventor of an
instrument which he called the Telephone, which instrument can now be
used to transmit speech; which was then used to transmit speech; and
which was invented on purpose to transmit speech. So far the result of
the examination into the facts of the case is conclusive enough. A more
complete case could hardly be desired. No honest person could hesitate
for want of proof, either greater in amount or more direct to the point.
Nevertheless, I propose in another section to go a little further and
to prove a technical point of highest interest; namely, that there is
not in the Telephone Exchanges of England to-day, any single telephone
to be found in which the fundamental principles of Reis’s Telephone
are not the essential and indispensable features. These considerations
being, however, of a strictly technical nature, will be best considered
in an Appendix. As, however, we are able to show that those instruments
which are now in daily use for transmitting speech, embody the two
fundamental principles upon which Reis based the instrument which he
called “_Das Telephon_,” it would be dishonest to the memory of the
deceased inventor to claim anything less than that he was the “first
and true inventor” of the Telephone.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The name “Telephone” had already been applied by Sir C. Wheatstone
(1831) to an acoustic arrangement for transmitting sounds through
wooden rods to a distant place in a purely mechanical manner. It
is needless to observe that speech as well as music can be thus
transmitted; and though Wheatstone gave telephonic concerts, this
does not prove (nor do telephonic concerts given through Reis’s
instrument prove) that speech could not be transmitted also. The name
“Fernsprecher,” _now_ used in Germany for the Telephone, was only
suggested in 1877 by Dr. Stephan, Postmaster of the German Empire, in
obedience to the absurd fashion which has raged since 1871 in Germany
of rejecting words of classic derivation.
[7] See proceedings in U. S. Court (Dowd suit), Edison’s second answer,
and Prescott’s ‘The Speaking Telephone,’ p. 218.
[8] Published volume of Proceedings in the United States Patent Office,
before the Commissioner of Patents. Evidence for A. G. Bell, p. 6.
[9] Proc. Soc. Telegr. Engin. and Electr. vol. xi. p. 134, 1882.
[10] ‘Electrical Review,’ July 22, 1882, p. 49.
[11] Mr. E. Albert, of the firm of J. W. Albert and Sohn, of Frankfurt,
to whom Reis entrusted the manufacture of Telephones for public sale,
thus writes: “The most important part was the membrane, because the
delicacy of the apparatus depended principally upon that part. As it
was not possible to make every membrane equally good, so it came about
that instruments of different degrees of superiority came into use, and
various decisions were arrived at as to the ability of the instrument
to perform the functions for which it was designed. Those who happened
to have a poor instrument were able to hear but little; while those
who possessed a good instrument were astonished at its performances.
A good instrument reproduced the words sung into it in such a manner
that not only the pitch but also the words of the song were perfectly
understood, even when the listener was unacquainted with the song and
the words.”
M. St. Edmé, of Paris, who contributed to ‘Cosmos,’ vol. xxiv. p. 349,
1864, an article on Reis’s Telephone, of which he had seen an example
in König’s _atelier_, said that when the scale was sung it needed a
trained ear to distinguish the notes amidst the noises of the receiver.
He must have got hold of an uncommonly bad transmitter with a flabby
tympanum to have failed so completely.
[12] Letter of Dr. Messel to Professor W. F. Barrett quoted, in
Professor Barrett’s memoir, ‘On the Electric Telephone,’ read Nov. 19,
1877, to the Dublin Royal Society. Vide Proc. Roy. Soc. Dubl. 1877.
[13] See Barrett’s ‘Telephones Old and New’ (1878), p. 12.
[14] See Reis’s own remark at bottom of p. 57.