Philipp Reis

Philipp Reis is subtitled Inventor of the Telephone, and the text says the point at issue is not whether Philipp Reis invented a telephone, which is not denied, but whether Philipp Reis invented the Telephone. The text says that, by the mouth of popular scientific writers, of eminent engineers, and of accomplished barristers, it has been decreed that Reis’s invention was not an instrument for transmitting human speech at all. The contents list a section on the variation of electric resistance at a point of imperfect contact in a circuit, among others.

The text says the writer has heard better articulation from a transmitter with contacts of pure bright silver than with any carbon transmitter. The text says Reis used for his contact-points substances which, by reason of their non-liability to fuse or oxidize, were customary in electrical apparatus, and chiefly platinum. The text says it has often been said, but incorrectly, that Reis intended his interruptors or contact regulators to make and break the electric circuit abruptly in the manner of a telegraphic key worked by hand.