John Munro

“ But the vibrations of speech are irregular and complicated, and in order to transmit them the current has to be varied in strength without being altogether broken. The waves excited in the air by the voice should merely produce corresponding waves in the current. In short, the current ought to undulate in sympathy with the oscillations of the air. It appears from the report of Herr Von Legat, inspector of the Royal Prussian Telegraphs, on the Reis telephone, published in 1862, that the inventor was quite aware of this principle, but his instrument was not well adapted to apply it. ”

“ But Reis does not seem to have realised the importance of not entirely breaking the circuit of the current; at all events, his metal spring is not in practice an effective provision against this, for it allows the metal contacts to jolt too far apart, and thus interrupt the current. Had he lived to modify the spring and the form or material of his contacts so as to keep the current continuous—as he might have done, for example, by using carbon for platinum—he would have forestalled alike Bell, Edison, and Hughes in the production of a good speaking telephone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From these and other discoveries which had been made by Noad, Wertheim, Marrian, and others, Reis knew that if the current which had been interrupted by his vibrating diaphragm were conveyed to a distance by a metallic circuit, and there passed through a coil like that of Page, the iron needle would emit a note like that which had caused the oscillation of the transmitting diaphragm. Acting on this knowledge, he constructed a rude telephone. ”

“ 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, [2] 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 ”

“ The transmitter of Reis was based on the plan of interrupting the current, and the spring was intended to close the contact after it had been opened by the shock of a vibration. So long as the sound was a musical tone it proved efficient, for a musical tone is a regular succession of vibrations. ”