THE HISTOR Y OF THE TELEPHONE. I95 



Mr. Berliner says : 



The general impression having at all times been that Reis was unacquainted 

 with Bourseul's ideas relating to the electrical transmission of speech, and that he 

 was an original inventor, the following article from the Didaskalia, a semi-weekly 

 printed in Frankfort-on-the-Main (the abode of Reis from 1848 to 1S54), a paper 

 devoted to belles lettres, arts and sciences, and which in its time had a large cir- 

 culation throughout Middle and Southern Germany, will be interesting to all 

 electricians. ^ 



The article is from the 32nd volume of the Didaskalia^ in No, 232, and the 

 issue bears the date Thursday, September 28, 1854. 



The undersigned has prepared a verbal translation of this remarkable docu- 

 ment, and through ihe kindness of the editor of this paper has commented on it 

 in another column of this issue, 



E. Berliner. 

 Didaskalia. 32nd volume. No. 232. Frankfort, September 28, 1854. Elcc- 



trische Telephonie. 



The wonders with which electricity has surprised us lately will, as it seems, 

 be augmented by a new one which will not only produce a revolution in the 

 present electrical telegraphy, but will also enhance its utility in an incalculable 

 manner. It concerns nothing more or less than the electrical transmission and 

 rendition of the spoken word. The idea originated with a young and modest but 

 educated man, Charles Bourseul, who in 1848 was a soldier of the African army, 

 where he made himself observed to the Governor-General by a mathematical 

 course which he gave to his comrades of the garrison in Algiers ; he now lives in 

 Paris. Perhaps Bourseul's problem, of the feasibiUty of which he is perfectly 

 convinced, belongs to the line of those discoveries which the learned world after- 

 ward declares as very simple, and of which they would then make us believe 

 would have been found out much earlier if they would have taken the trouble (to 

 find it). As we know, the principle on which electro-telegraphy is founded is 

 the following : 



An electric current circulating in a metal wire transforms a piece of soft iron 

 with which it comes in contact(?) into a magnet. As soon as the current ceases, 

 the magnetic quality gives way. This magnet, the electro-magnet, can there- 

 fore alternately attract and let go a movable plate which, by its motion of coming 

 and going, produces the conventional signs which are used in telegraphy. 



It is furthermore known that all tones are communicated to the ear merely 

 by undulations of the air, being, therefore, themselves nothing but these undula- 

 tions of the air, and that the differences (without end) of the tones depend solely 

 and exclusively on the rapidity and the strength of these sound-waves. If, now, 

 a metal plate could be invented so movable and flexible as to render all the tone 

 undulations equal in the air, and if this plate be so connected to an electric cur- 

 rent that it would alternately make and break the electric current according to 

 the air undulations by which it is struck, then it would be possible to cause a 

 second similarly constructed plate to electrically repeat at the same time exactly 



