542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



afraid to make a noise in the class-room lest Herr Reis should hear 

 them while among his instruments. 



In 1861 Reis exhibited his telephone to the Physical Society of 

 Frankfort, and his elaborate and illustrated memoir on that occasion 

 appears in its "Annual" for 1860-'G1. 



In 1862 Reis sent a memoir on the telephone to Poggendorf for 

 his "Annalen," which was again declined, despite the advocacy of 

 Professor Bottger and Professor Midler of Freiburg Poggendorf 

 " treating the transmission of speech by electricity as a myth." Reis 

 felt this rejection very keenly, ascribing it to his inferior position as 

 a poor schoolmaster. 



Between 1861 and 1864 Reis gave public exhibitions of his tele- 

 phone before various scientific bodies, and it became widely known. 

 In addition to his own lectures and papers on the telephone, it was 

 the subject of lectures and reports by prominent men in various parts 

 of Germany, and in 1863 it was exhibited to the Emperor of Austria 

 and King Max of Bavaria, then on a visit to Frankfort. Telephones, 

 also, were sent to various parts of the world, and were manufactured 

 for Reis by Albert, of Frankfort, and sold for scientific illustrative 

 use in 1863. It is related that, in September, 1864, after a successful 

 exhibition before the Association of German Naturalists at Giessen, 

 he received at last an invitation from Poggendorf to prepare an ac- 

 count of the telephone for the "Annalen." Reis replied, thanking 

 him, and telling him that it was too late, that he should not send it, 

 and that his apparatus would become known without description in 

 the "Annalen." 



If this offer had not been refused by Reis, the diffusion of the tele- 

 phone would probably have taken place at a much earlier day. It did 

 not, however, pass out of sight. It was figured and described in ency- 

 clopaedias and text-books in different languages. Reis's telephone in 

 England was the subject of experiment and improvement ; and it is even 

 rumored with a good deal of probability that his instruments were so 

 far improved in a German neighborhood in Pennsylvania that fluent 

 talking was obtained some years before the revival of the telephone in 

 this country by Gray and Bell. 



The year 1864 was probably the culminating point of Reis's career 

 in connection with the telephone, though his labors continued. He 

 proclaimed the invention of the speaking telephone as an accomplished 

 scientific fact, and confidently predicted its practical commercial appli- 

 cation. The indifference with which his discovery was often received, 

 and the rebuffs which he encountered, told on a sensitive temperament, 

 and still more on a body struggling with a fatal disease in the early 

 prime of life. For several years he discharged his professional duties 

 only by great effort. We can see the poor schoolmaster of Fried- 

 riclisdorf, who had created the telephone, striving at disadvantage to 

 earn the necessaries of life for his wife and children, though we have 



