Johann Philipp Reis (1834-1874)

Erfinder und Erfindungen
German Inventors and Inventions

“Ein Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat.”
   - Words supposedly spoken by Philipp Reis
    when testing his new telephone invention.

DAS TELEFON | DER FERNSPRECHER

The telephone was invented by at least five different people in four different countries. Although the Scottish-American Alexander Graham Bell is generally credited as the "winner" in the race to invent the telephone in the period between 1850 and 1876, his invention was preceded or paralleled by the German Philipp Reis, the Belgian-French M. Charles Bourseul, the Italian Antonio Meucci, and the American Elisha Gray.

Reis auf einem Familienfoto.

In his short life (he died at 40), the German science teacher Philipp Reis accomplished a remarkable feat that brought him neither wealth nor fame. In 1852, Reis began work on his "artificial ear" (künstliches Ohr) project by gathering some common materials found around his house in Friedrichsdorf, Germany, not far from Frankfurt.

In a homemade lab in a shed in his backyard, and on a very limited budget, Reis assembled components that few people would associate with the construction of a telephone: a violin (eine Violine), a knitting needle (eine Stricknadel), a large cork (ein großer Korken), a coil of wire (eine Drahtrolle), and a sausage (eine Wurst).

We tend to forget that it is the microphone (das Mikrofon) that is key to any telephone device. (Without the microphone there would also be no radio, no sound movies or TV, and no recording industry.) That is where both Bell (who had read Hermann Helmholtz's work on electrical sound transmission) and Reis began. For his first experiments in the 1850s, Reis used a sausage skin stretched across a hollowed-out cork as a membrane for his crude microphone (der Geber). Using wax, he attached a metal contact to the membrane. This contact was linked to the strings of a violin, which served as a receiver or speaker (der Empfänger). Later he would use an electromagnetic receiver.

Das Reis'sche „Telephon” von 1861.

After nine years of work, Reis had refined his device to the point that he could present it to Frankfurt's Physics Association (Der Physikalische Verein) on 26 October 1861. His lecture on "Telephony Using Galvanic Current" („Das Telefonieren durch galvanischen Strom”) did not result in as much enthusiasm as Reis might have hoped for. But two years later, 50 copies of his "Telephon" (he was one of the first to coin the term) were manufactured by a German firm, and a few more in England.

Unfortunately, the Reis telephone was not practical enough to be a commercial success. It could transmit sound, particularly music, but it was difficult to understand the spoken word. Reis would die of tuberculosis two years before Bell's U.S. patent was filed in 1876. (Bell's phone, particularly its microphone, had to be improved by others before it could become a widespread success.) Ironically, in his patent fight with Bell, Elisha Gray used the legal defense that it was Reis and not Bell who had invented the telephone, and thus Bell was not entitled to his patent. But the court ruled that the Reis version could not be considered a real telephone, and Bell won the patent struggle.

Today the former Reis home in Friedrichsdorf is a museum dedicated to the inventor (die Philipp-Reis Gedächtnisstätte) and operated by the Museumsstiftung Post und Telekommunikation. Since 1987, the Philipp-Reis-Preis has been awarded every two years to a promising German inventor under the age of 40. (See links below.)

Also see: English-German Technology Glossary

BOOK: The Telephone and Its Several Inventors by Lewis Coe, McFarland & Co., 1995

MORE > Inventors and Discovers (Contents)

• Adventures in Cybersound - Johann Philipp Reis - A fairly detailed bio in English, assembled from various sources. Part of an online doctorate by Dr. Russell Naughton at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
• Telefonmuseum - Philipp Reis - "Als Philipp Reis das Telefon erfand." An illustrated guide to the German inventor of the telephone - in German.
• Philipp-Reis Gedächtnisstätte - Im ehemaligen Wohnhaus von Philipp Reis in Friedrichsdorf gibt es seit 1951 eine Gedächtnisstätte zu Ehren des Erfinders.
• Museum Für Kommunikation - Die Museumsstiftung Post und Telekommunikation führt vier Museen für Kommunikation in Berlin, Frankfurt, Nürnberg und Hamburg sowie ein Archiv für Philatelie am Stiftungssitz in Bonn. (The former Postal Museum)
• Stiftung Philipp-Reis-Preis - Alle zwei Jahre wird der Preis an bis zu 40-jährige Ingenieure/-innen oder Naturwissenschaftler/-innen verliehen, die mit ihrer Arbeit eine bedeutende nachrichtentechnische Neuerung in Gang gesetzt haben bzw. eine solche Entwicklung erwarten lassen.
• Johann Philipp Reis - Links to info in German or English on the inventors of the telephone. From Niester.de.

MORE > Inventors and Discovers (Contents)

English-German Technology Glossary
An annotated glossary of terms related to technology and inventions.

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Ratespiel - Wer bin ich?
A biographical guessing game in German.

Glossaries
Annotated English-German glossaries on a wide variety of topics.

Famous Germans, Austrians and Swiss
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