Johann Philipp Reis

thumb|Johann Philipp Reis

Johann Philipp Reis (; 7 January 1834 – 14 January 1874) was a self-taught German scientist and inventor. In 1861, he constructed the first make-and-break telephone, today called the Reis telephone. It was the first device to transmit a voice via electronic signals, and is regarded by some as the first telephone. Reis also coined the term telephone.

Early life and education

thumb|Reis' home in Friedrichsdorf, now a museum

Reis was born in Gelnhausen, Germany, the son of Marie Katharine (Glöckner) and Karl Sigismund Reis, a great baker. His father belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran church. Reis's mother died while he was an infant, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother, a well-read, intelligent woman. At the age of six Reis was sent to the common school of his hometown of Gelnhausen. Here his talents attracted the notice of his instructors, who advised his father to extend his education at a higher college. His father died before Reis was ten years old. His grandmother and guardians placed him at Garnier's Institute, in Friedrichsdorf, where he showed a taste for languages, and acquired both French and English, as well as a stock of miscellaneous information from the library.

At the end of his fourteenth year, Reis was accepted to a Hassel Institute, at Frankfurt am Main, where he learned Latin and Italian. A love of science became apparent, and his guardians were recommended to send him to the Polytechnic School of Karlsruhe. His uncle wished him to become a merchant, and on 1 March 1850, Reis was apprenticed as a paints dealer in the establishment of J. F. Beyerbach, of Frankfurt, against his will. He told his uncle that he would learn the business chosen for him, but would continue his preferred studies as he could. His second offering was also rejected, like the first. The learned professor, it seems, regarded the transmission of speech by electricity as a chimera; Reis bitterly attributed the failure to his being "only a poor schoolmaster." It aroused more interest in the United States In 1872 when Professor Vanderwyde demonstrated it in New York.

Prior to 1947, the Reis device was tested by the British company Standard Telephones and Cables (STC). The results also confirmed it could faintly transmit and receive speech. At the time STC was bidding for a contract with Alexander Graham Bell's American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and the results were covered up by STC's chairman Sir Frank Gill to maintain Bell's reputation.

Reis does not seem to have realised the importance of not entirely breaking the circuit of the current; at all events, his metal spring was not practical for this, for it allowed the metal contacts to jolt too far apart, and thus interrupt the electric current.

His experiments were made in a little workshop behind his home at Friedrichsdorf; and wires were run from it to an upper chamber. Another line was erected between the physical cabinet at Garnier's Institute across the playground to one of the classrooms, and there was a tradition in the school that the boys were afraid of creating an uproar in the room for fear that Philipp Reis would hear them with his "telephon".

Publication

Reis' new invention was articulated in a lecture before the Physical Society of Frankfurt on 26 October 1861, and a description, written by himself for Jahresbericht a month or two later. It created a good deal of scientific excitement in Germany; models of it were sent abroad, to London, Dublin, Tiflis, and other places. It became a subject for popular lectures, and an article for scientific cabinets.

Reis obtained brief renown, but rejection soon set in. The Physical Society of Frankfurt turned its back on the apparatus which had given it lustre. Reis resigned in 1867, but the Free German Institute of Frankfurt, which elected him as an honorary member, also slighted the instrument as a mere "philosophical toy".

Reis believed in his invention, even if no one else did; and had he been encouraged by his peers from the beginning he might have perfected it. He was already stricken with tuberculosis, however. After Reis gave a lecture on the telephone at Gießen in 1854, Poggendorff, who was present, invited him to send a description of his instrument to the Annalen. Reis, it is said, replied: "Ich danke Ihnen sehr, Herr Professor, aber es ist zu spät. Jetzt will ich ihn nicht schicken. Mein Apparat wird ohne Beschreibung in den Annalen bekannt werden" ("Thank you very much, Professor, but it is too late. Now I do not want to send it. My apparatus will become known without any description in the Annalen.")

Final days

right|thumb|upright|Grave of Reis at [[Friedrichsdorf — from Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone by Silvanus Thompson (1883) ]]

Later, Reis continued his teaching and scientific studies, but his failing health had become a serious impediment. For several years it was only by the exercise of his strong will that he was able to carry on with his duties. His voice began to fail as his lung disease became more pronounced, and in the summer of 1873, he was obliged to forsake his tutoring duties for several weeks. An autumn vacation strengthened his hopes of recovery and he resumed his teaching, but it was to be the last flicker of his expiring flame. It was announced that he would show his new gravity-machine at a meeting of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte (Society of German Scientists and Physicians) of Wiesbaden in September, but he was too ill to appear. In December he lay down and, after a long and painful illness, died at five o'clock in the afternoon of 14 January 1874.

In his Curriculum Vitae he wrote:

Philipp Reis was buried in the cemetery of Friedrichsdorf, and in 1878, after the introduction of the electric telephone, the members of the Physical Society of Frankfurt erected an obelisk of red sandstone bearing a medallion portrait over his grave.

Another controversy arose over a century later when the U.S. Congress passed a resolution in 2002 recognizing Italian-American Antonio Meucci's contributions in the invention of the telephone (not for the invention of the telephone), a declaration that bore no legal or other standing at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Canada's Parliament quickly followed with a tit-for-tat declaration, which clarified: "....that Alexander Graham Bell of Brantford, Ont., and Baddeck, N.S., [was] the inventor of the telephone." Prior to his death, Meucci had lost his only concluded Federal lawsuit trial related to the telephone's invention.

References

External links

The "Telephon" of Philipp Reis by Basilio Catania
"Bell 'did not invent telephone'" - BBC News article
Silvanus P. Thompson - Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone A Biographical Sketch