January 14, 1874 - Death of Johann Philipp Reis, scientist, autodidact, teacher and inventor of the ‘telephone’?

In 1860, he created his prototype of what he called a ‘telephone’, which could cover a distance of 100 metres. Reis' loudspeaker worked by magnetostriction (a property of magnetic materials that causes them to change shape in the presence of a magnetic field) and his receiver was a coil with wire wrapped around an iron needle from a loom and held against the bore of a violin. As the electric current passed through the needle, the wire contracted and contact was made. It was insensitive and produced a very weak sound signal but of acceptable quality. In addition, a very high voltage was necessary.

It was patented that his instrument was not only limited to emitting musical notes, for Reis, to prove that his voice could be successfully recognised from the other side, introduced a phrase in German that was difficult to understand acoustically, which read: ‘The horse does not eat cucumber salad’.

He had great difficulty getting Germany to take him seriously and consider his discovery. He presented it on 26 October 1861 to the Frankfurt am Main Physics Association and even showed it in 1862 to Whilhem von Legat, inspector of the Royal Prussian Telegraph Corps, who wrote a description of it, which, interestingly, Thomas Alva Edison used in 1875 to develop his carbon microphone.

The controversy over the invention of the telephone is well known; in addition to Reis and Bell, many others claimed to be the authors of its invention. Finally, on 27 February 1901, the case was decided in Bell's favour and the Bell Telephone Company prevailed in this crucial decision, as well as in the more than 600 other pending cases related to the invention of the telephone.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: Johann Philipp Reis