THE TELEPHONE AND ITS INVENTOR. 547 



block and is closed at d by a membrane. A platinum strip, b, extends 

 from the screw-cup p, to the center of tbe membrane d, to which it is 

 attached. From the screw-cup n a spring, n d, carrying a platinum 

 style, makes contact at d with the platinum strip p d. This original 

 instrument, presented by Reis to Professor Bottger, is now in the pos- 

 session of Professor Thompson. It has an adjusting screw in the 

 course of the spring n d. 



Reis's claim as an inventor is discussed by Professor Thompson 

 and fully substantiated under the three following heads : "1. Reis's 

 telephone was expressly intended to transmit speech. 2. Reis's tele- 

 phone, in the hands of lieis and his contemporaries, did transmit 

 speech. 3. Reis's telephone w ill transmit speech.'''' Before bringing 

 forward evidence on these points, Professor Thompson disposes of a 

 current prejudice against Reis's telephone, which has been not alto- 

 gether innocently created. It has been called a " tone-telephone," or 

 musical telephone, by those interested in relegating it to the category 

 of harmonic instruments. Reis called it neither an articulating nor 

 tone telephone, but simply " Das Telephon." He spoke habitually of 

 reproducing any and all sounds through its agency, the German word 

 used being Ton, plural Tone, which is nearly the equivalent of our 

 English word " sound." By transferring the German word (untrans- 

 lated) to the English it has been attempted to narrow the scope of his 

 discovery as stated in his own words. It is in place here to say that 

 Reis was no musician, and could hardly distinguish one tune from 

 another. 



Reis's first memoir on the telephone, delivered before the Physical 

 Society of Frankf ort-on-the-Main, in 1861, and printed in their " An- 

 nual " for the same year, begins thus : " The surprising results in the 

 domain of telegraphy have often already suggested the question 

 whether it may not be possible to communicate the very ' tones ' 

 [sounds] of speech direct to a distance." He says that " the cardinal 

 question " always was " how could a single instrument reproduce at 

 once the total action of all the organs operated by human speech." 

 Could the expression of intention be plainer ? He says, again : " Until 

 now [1861], it has not been possible to reproduce the 'tones' [sounds] 

 of human speech with a distinctness to satisfy everybody. TJie con- 

 sonants are for the most part tolerably distinctly reproduced, but the 

 vowels not yet in an equal degree.'''' Was this only a "tone-tele- 

 phone " ? He proceeds to show the cause of the difficulty in the case 

 of vowels by diagrams of the undulating curves representing con- 

 sonant and vowel sounds. The memoir concludes thus : " There may 

 probably remain much to be done toward making the telephone of 

 practiced commercial value. For physics, however, it has already 

 sufficient interest in that it has opened out a new field of labor. . . . 

 Philipp Reis, December, 1861." It will be observed that this date 

 precedes the improved forms of Reis's telephone, by which the some- 



