Nor did this imperfection cause Reis to hide his intentions from the world. He modestly claimed such success as he had obtained, and left the rest. In 1863 he drew up a Prospectus (given in extenso on p. 85), which was printed to accompany the instruments which were sold; and of which copies are still extant. In this document he says: “Besides the human voice, according to my experience, there can also be reproduced the tones of good organ pipes, from F to c''', and those of a piano.” In this same Prospectus (p. 87) occur the instructions for the use of the signal call by which the listener communicates his wishes to the speaker. Those instructions run: “One beat = sing; two beats = speak.” Can any sane person doubt that Reis intended his instrument to transmit speech, when such directions stand printed in his own Prospectus? Legat’s Report (1862) speaks of Reis’s instrument as intended (see p. 77) to speak, and further describes the use of an elliptic cavity to which the listener can apply his ear. Kuhn (1866) (see p. 106) says that the square-box transmitter (Figs. [17], [18]) did not send speech well, and complains that he could only get from it an indistinguishable noise. Doubtless he spoke too loudly, Pisko (1865) speaks of the Reis instrument as intended for speaking (p. 105). Further, in the letter which Reis wrote in 1863 to Mr. W. Ladd, of London, he expressly emphasises by underscoring the word that his Telephone can transmit “any sound” that is sufficiently loud, and he refers to the speaker and listener at the two ends of the line as “the correspondents.” The only reply henceforth possible to any person who shall assert that Reis’s Telephone was not expressly intended to transmit articulate speech is the good honest retort: impudentissime mentiris.
II.—Reis’s Telephone, in the hands of Reis and his contemporaries, did transmit speech.
Of the performance of his instruments Reis speaks modestly and carefully, nothing extenuating of his failures, nothing exaggerating of his successes. I shall not attempt to be wiser than he; nor seek to make out his instrument to have been either more perfect or more reliable than he himself knew it to be. The membrane tympanum of his transmitter was liable to become relaxed by the moisture of the breath rendering the instrument—as Graham Bell found fifteen years later with his membrane magneto-transmitters—uncertain in its action. Moreover, in some earlier forms of Reis’s transmitter, notably those with a vertical tympanum, the adjustment of the contact-points that controlled the current was a matter of delicacy requiring experience and practice, so that casual experimenters failed to obtain the results which Reis himself obtained;[11] they obtaining only a noisy snarl where he obtained intelligible speech. Lastly, the very delicacy of the essential parts, the conducting strips of metal which lay lightly in contact against one another, militated against a uniformity of success when tried with different voices, some of which were too low to produce any effect, others so loud as to rattle the delicate contact-pieces in a manner fatal to the attainment of the desired result.
In spite of all these drawbacks, which were not inherent in the principle of the instrument, there is plenty of evidence that Reis’s Telephone did transmit speech. Reis himself records this fact:
- (1.) In 1861, in his memoir ‘On Telephony’ (see p. 58), “The consonants are for the most part tolerably distinctly reproduced, but the vowels not yet in an equal degree.”
- (2.) In his ‘Prospectus’ (p. 86) Reis says that the tones of organ-pipes and of the piano can be reproduced as well as the tones of the human voice, “according to my experience.”
- (3.) The fact is attested by Inspector Wilhelm von Legat, in his Report in the ‘Zeitschrift’ (p. 77), 1862. After alluding to the indistinctness of the vowels, he says: “Single words, uttered as in reading, speaking, and the like, were perceptible indistinctly, nevertheless, here also the inflexions of the voice, the modulations of interrogation, exclamation, wonder, command, etc., attained distinct expression.”
- (4.) Professor Quincke, of Heidelberg, testifies (see p. 113) that he heard and understood words spoken through a Reis Telephone in 1864.
- (5.) Professor Böttger, editor of the ‘Polytechnisches Notizblatt,’ in 1863 says (see p. 90): “The experimenters could even communicate words to one another, though certainly indeed, only such as had often been heard by them.”
- (6.) Dr. Rudolph Messel, an old pupil of Reis, and an eye-witness of his early experiments, has written[12]: “There is not a shadow of a doubt about Reis having actually achieved imperfect articulation. I personally recollect this very distinctly, and could find you plenty more people who witnessed the same.”
- (7.) Herr Peter, a former colleague of Philipp Reis, whose testimony will be found on page 126, narrates how he doubted the powers of the instrument until he had verified them for himself by speaking into it words which could not possibly be premeditated.
- (8.) Mr. E. Horkheimer, who aided Reis in his earlier work, though he left Germany when the development of the instrument was yet very far from complete, has even given (see p. 117) a list of the words and expressions which he has heard transmitted by the earlier forms of the instrument.
- (9.) Herr Philipp Schmidt, brother-in-law of Philipp Reis, and now acting-paymaster in the Imperial German Navy at Wilhelmshavn, says: “he succeeded finally in reproducing at a distance, words and whole sentences.” “There never was any understanding between my brother-in-law and myself as to particular words and sentences: on the contrary, these were quite spontaneous.”
- (10.) Mr. S. M. Yeates, of Dublin, who in 1865 constructed a modified Reis Telephone (see p. 128), has thus described the performance of the instrument: “Before disposing of the apparatus, I showed it at the November meeting (1865) of the Dublin Philosophical Society, when both singing and the distinct articulation of several words were heard through it, and the difference between the speakers’ voices clearly recognised.”[13]
It is difficult to conceive how testimony on this point could be stronger. From so many different sources it is alike agreed that—with the instrument presumably in good adjustment—Reis’s Telephone, in the hands of Reis and his contemporaries, did transmit articulate speech.
III.—Reis’s Telephone will transmit speech.
Reis’s Telephone consists of two parts: a “transmitter,” into which the speaker speaks; and a “receiver,” at which the hearer listens. Their various forms have been described in detail in the preceding chapter. All that we are concerned with at this place is, whether these instruments will at the present day do what is asserted. The writer has tested every form of Reis’s transmitter, save only some of the tentative historic forms shown in Figs. [2-8], [13], [15], & [16], ante, and has found them perfectly competent to transmit speech, provided proper precautions were taken: namely, that the contacts were clean and in adjustment, that the tympanum was tightly stretched, and that the speaker did not speak too loudly:[14] in other words, that the instruments were properly used. Any one who wants not to succeed in transmitting speech with Reis’s transmitter has only to neglect these reasonable precautions. It is not, therefore, difficult to fail. The writer has also tested both the better-known forms of Reis’s receiver (Figs. [21], [22], & [23]), and finds that both are perfectly competent to receive speech electrically and reproduce it audibly, both vowels and consonants being perfectly distinct and articulate, though never as loud as in more modern forms of telephone-receiver. From a steel wire, magnetised, as prescribed by Reis, by surrounding it with a coil of wire through which the current passes, the writer has obtained articulation exceeding in perfection of definition, both of vowels and of consonants, the articulation of any other telephone-receiver he has ever listened to. Perhaps it may be objected that it is difficult to listen to a steel wire. Reis met this difficulty in his own way by mounting his steel wire upon a small sounding-box to strengthen the sounds, and added a flat upper case against which the ear of the listener can be pressed, and which can be removed, or opened as a lid, when a whole audience is to hear simultaneously the tones of the instrument when working in a loud and disagreeable manner, as a transmitter of the coarser vibrations of a loudly sung melody. The lid is not wanted for this latter purpose—is an encumbrance; which, nevertheless, by its presence proves the more delicate functions of the instrument. Reis’s instructions in his ‘Prospectus,’ p. 86, are that pressing this lid down firmly upon the steel core increases the loudness of the sounds. Any one who wants not to succeed in receiving speech with Reis’s receiver has, as before, only to neglect reasonable precautions. He has only to use an imperfect or bad transmitter, or use it carelessly, or put the receiver to a sufficient distance from his ear, to attain this result. There are people who have failed to make Reis’s receiver receive.
This is not the place to discuss a doctrinaire objection sometimes raised, that it is theoretically impossible for Reis’s instruments to work. For the moment we are concerned with the practical question: Do they work? No one practically experienced in telephones, even if he should deny that Reis had any such intention, will dispute that they can now be made to transmit speech. Professor Dolbear, himself no mean authority on telephones, testifies, as quoted above (p. 41), “that the instruments would talk, and would talk well.” He would, indeed, be a bold man who would come forward to deny what can be shown any day as an experimental fact: that Reis’s Telephone will transmit speech.
We have now shown that Philipp Reis was the undisputed inventor of an instrument which he called the Telephone, which instrument can now be used to transmit speech; which was then used to transmit speech; and which was invented on purpose to transmit speech. So far the result of the examination into the facts of the case is conclusive enough. A more complete case could hardly be desired. No honest person could hesitate for want of proof, either greater in amount or more direct to the point.