[29] [This was the little auxiliary signalling apparatus at the side of the box, placed there for the same reasons as the auxiliary call-bell attached to modern telephones.]
[30] [This word is underscored in Reis’s original letter.]
[31] [Compare Böttger Polyt. Notizbl. 1863, p. 81, the notice translated at p. 61 preceding.]—S. P. T.
[32] [This rather obscure passage refers to the call-key or communicator fixed to the side of the instruments, and which as the inventor explains in his Prospectus (see p. 87), to be intended, like the call-bell or communicator of modern telephones, as a means of sending signals to the speaker, and which, as the Prospectus says, can also be used—as any call-bell can—for telegraphing words by a pre-arranged code of signals.]—S. P. T.
[33] [Fig. 30 of this book.]
[34] [References.] Telephon von Reis im Jahresbericht des physikalischen Vereins zu Frankfurt-a.-M. für 1860-1861, pag. 57 bis 64. Müller-Pouillet, Physik, 1863, 6. Auflage, II pag. 352, Fig. 325. Berl. Ber. für 1861, xvii. pag. 171 bis 173. Der Musiktelegraph in der “Gartenlaube” 1863, Nr. 51, pag. 807 bis 909. Aus der Natur 1862, xxi. pag. 470 bis 484; König’s Catalog, 1865, pag. 5.
[35] [This part of the apparatus is in fact a “call,” serving precisely the same function as the call-bell attached to ordinary telephones, by which the subscriber can be “called up” to listen to the instrument. It is not without importance to observe that this function was perfectly well-known at the time; for it was gravely argued during a former telephone law-suit in England that the presence of this “signal-call” at the side of the Reis Transmitter was a proof that it was intended to transmit singing only and not speech, or “else there would not have been that little Morse-instrument at the side by which to talk”! This suggestion is, however, self-evidently absurd, because if this had been the case the little electromagnetic Morse telegraph would have been fixed, not on the side of the transmitter but on that of the receiver. Reis himself explains the use of the “call” (see p. 87) in his “Prospectus.”]—S. P. T.
[36] [Professor Pisko seems to have got hold of an unusually unfortunate specimen of the instrument if he could make it neither speak nor sing. His transmitter must have been in exceedingly bad condition to fail so completely.]
[37] This error has been copied by Count du Moncel, along with the other defects of the article, into the fifth volume of his ‘Applications of Electricity,’ published in 1878. It is rather amusing now to read, at p. 106, of Du Moncel’s treatise that “Heisler” (sic) “pretends” that the telephone of “Reuss,” which “appears” to have been invented “anterior to the year 1866,” was capable of transmitting vocal melodies! Count du Moncel, though he has since posed as an authority on the telephone, did not in 1878 shine in that capacity, for on the very same page of the Count’s book may be found the following astounding sentiment:—“If it is true, as Sir W. Thomson has assured us, that at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876 there was a telegraphic system transmitting words, we may recognize,” &c. Count du Moncel has since found out that it is true that there was a Telephone in Philadelphia in 1876: perhaps he will next discover that “Reuss” did, “anterior to the year 1866,” actually “appear” to transmit not only what “Heisler” “pretends” he did, but that he also transmitted spoken words.—S. P. T.
[38] Ueber Fortpflanzung der Töne auf wilkührlich weite Entfernungen, mit Hülfe der Elektricität (Telephonie). Polyt. Journ. clxviii. 185; aus Böttger’s Notizbl. 1863, Nr. 6. [See translation on page 61.]