JOHANN PHILIPP REIS.
Johann Philipp Reis, the first inventor of an electric telephone, was born on January 7, 1834, at the little town of Gelnhausen, in Cassel, where his father was a master baker and petty farmer. The boy lost his mother during his infancy, and was brought up by his paternal grandmother, a well-read, intelligent woman, of a religious turn. While his father taught him to observe the material world, his grandmother opened his mind to the Unseen.
At the age of six he was sent to the common school of the town, where his talents attracted the notice of his instructors, who advised his father to extend his education at a higher college. Mr. Reis died before his son was ten years old; but his grandmother and guardians afterwards 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 he passed to Hassel's Institute, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he picked up Latin and Italian. A love of science now began to show itself, and his guardians were recommended to send him to the Polytechnic School of Carlsruhe ; but one of them, his uncle, wished him to become a merchant, and on March 1, 1850, Reis was apprenticed to the colour trade in the establishment of Mr. J. FBeyerbach, of Frankfort, against his own will. He told his uncle that he would learn the business chosen for him, but should continue his proper studies by-and-by.
By diligent service he won the esteem of Mr. Beyerbach, and devoted his leisure to self-improvement, taking private lessons in mathematics and physics, and attending the lectures of Professor R. Bottger on mechanics at the Trade School. When his apprenticeship ended he attended the Institute of Dr. Poppe, in Frankfort, and as neither history nor geography was taught there, several of the students agreed to instruct each other in these subjects. Reis undertook geography, and believed he had found his true vocation in the art of teaching. He also became a member of the Physical Society of Frankfort.
In 1855 he completed his year of military service at Cassel, then returned to Frankfort to qualify himself as a teacher of mathematics and science in the schools by means of private study and public lectures.
His intention was to finish his training at the University of Heidelberg, but in the spring of 1858 he visited his old friend and master, Hofrath Garnier, who offered him a post in Garnier's Institute.
In the autumn of 1855 he removed to Friedrichsdorf, to begin his new career, and in September following he took a wife and settled down.
Reis imagined that electricity could be propagated through space, as light can, without the aid of a material conductor, and he made some experiments on the subject. The results were described in a paper 'On the Radiation of Electricity,' which, in 1859, he posted to Professor Poggendorff; for insertion in the well-known periodical, the ANNALEN DERPHYSIK. The memoir was declined, to the great disappointment of the sensitive young teacher.
Reis had studied the organs of hearing, and the idea of an apparatus for transmitting sound by means of electricity had been floating in his mind for years. Incited by his lessons on physics, in the year 1860 he attacked the problem, and was rewarded with success. In 1862 he again tried Poggendorff, with an account of his 'Telephon,' as he called it;[The word 'telephone' occurs in Timbs' REPOSITORY OF SCIENCE AND ARTfor 1845, in connection With a signal trumpet operated by compressed air.] but his second offering was rejected like the first. The learned professor, it seems, regarded the transmission of speech by electricity as a chimera; but Reis, in the bitterness of wounded feeling, attributed the failure to his being 'only a poor schoolmaster.'
Since the invention of the telephone, attention has been called to the fact that, in 1854, M. Charles Bourseul, a French telegraphist, [Happily still alive (1891).] had conceived a plan for conveying sounds and even speech by electricity. 'Suppose,' he explained, 'that a man speaks near a movable disc sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice; that this disc alternately makes and breaks the currents from a battery: you may have at a distance another disc which will simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... It is certain that, in a more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by electricity.
I have made experiments in this direction; they are delicate and demand time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a favourable result.'[See Du Moncel's EXPOSE DES APPLICATIONS, etc.]
Bourseul deserves the credit of being perhaps the first to devise an electric telephone and try to make it; but to Reis belongs the honour of first realising the idea. A writer may plot a story, or a painter invent a theme for a picture; but unless he execute the work, of what benefit is it to the world? True, a suggestion in mechanics may stimulate another to apply it in practice, and in that case the suggester is entitled to some share of the credit, as well as the distinction of being the first to think of the matter. But it is best when the original deviser also carries out the work; and if another should independently hit upon the same idea and bring it into practice, we are bound to honour him in full, though we may also recognise the merit of his predecessor.
