Robert Hooke describes how the first string phone, through a tightly drawn wire fixed at both ends to open ended cylinders, could propagate sound to a very consider able distance.

1774: Holland

Ewald Jurgens von Kleist & Petrus van Mussehanbroeck work on trying to store electricity in a glass jar filled with water, hence the Leyden Jar.

1820: Copenhagen, Denmark

H.C. Oersted conducted a lecture to explain his theory, which was that there was no connection between electricity and magnetism. He demonstrated that electricity flowing through a wire did not eff ect a compass needle. Of course when H.C. Oersted turned on the current the needle spun around. This now proved the opposite. Later that year in France , Andre Ampere , after seeing the lecture , wrote that the current must be producing a magnetic field.

1821: England

Sir Charles Wheatstone invented an instrument for transmitting sounds, which was described in the "Repository of Arts" as the telephone. He wrote an article describing the telephone in the context of theater, which later became known as the "theatrophone". Fifty years later Wheatstone went on to become the world's leading authority on the telegraph.

1825: England

William Sturgeon wrapped a wire around a soft metal bar to create the world's first electronic magnet. Several months after this experiment, Michael Faraday put a spinning magnet inside a horseshoe-shaped coil of wire, causing it to become electrified.

1837

De La Rive, Gassiot and Marrian observed that a magnetic bar emitted sound when exposed to rapid alternating magnetization and demagnetization. By moving toward the poles of a horseshoe magnet to a flat coil tra nsversed by an electrical current, a sound was heard. The science community referred to this sound as the "Magnetic Tick."

1857 (Germany?)

Pianist Hermann Helmholtz used an electromagnet to cause th e wires in his piano to vibrate. Helmholtz'es experiments would directly influence the design of Bell's first telephone. In 1854 France Charles Bourseval wrote a White Paper on electric transmission of speech.

Bourseval has now invented the telephone in theory. A lthough he goes on to create models, he never moves past the stage of transmitting electrical sounds. He never reaches the level of sending recognizable voice, paralleling (whose?) work in Frankfurt Germany,

1860 German y

Philip Reis, a school teacher living in Frankfurt Germany, invented the Telephone. It is almost unbelievable that 98% of the documentation we see today credits Alexander Grahm Bell for this invent ion. Philipp Reis has been wiped from the pages of history! WHEN BELL FILED HIS PATENT IN ENGLAND HE DID NOT CLAIM TO HAVE INVENTED THE TELEPHONE, but to have- "improvements in electric telephoney (transmitting or causing sounds for telegraphing me ssages) and telephonic apparatus." Bell is not the only one to have built so closely on the work of Reis. Blake is logged in on several of the conferences where Reise presented his theories and demonstrated his Telephone. Blake, as we know, went on to inv ent the "Blake Transmitter". Edison received a manuscript translation of Legat's Report on Reis's Telephone, from the Austro-German Telegraph Union 1862 from Hon. Mr. W. Orton.

BELL DID GIVE REIS CREDIT BY NAME in the paper entitled "Reseaches in Electric Telephony" which he presented at the Acamady of Arts and Sciences in May of 1876 and then at the Society o f Telegraphic Engineers, November, 1877. Bell also references Reis's work in an article written by Professor Bottger in Dingler's "Polytechnic Journal" 1863. The article printed in Karsten's Encyclopedia in 1878 goes on to describe Reis's device as follow s-

Many English publications throughout history claim that Reis's invention did not transmit speach, but did send musicial tones. Some called his devi ce the "Tone-phone" and recorded that "Reis's device was only intended to send tones not voice or speech". This comes from an important point of incorrect translation. The word tone in German means sound, which is of course, (due to the nature of his work ) used throughout his documentation. Reis often used musicians for demonstrations of his device. He got the idea from Wheatstone who conducted telegraph experiments much earlier on.

Reis did draw alot of atte ntion in Frankfurt, Germany when he demonstrated his device. Had he not become ill and died at the young age of forty in 1874, he would have particapated in the race for the telephone patent.

The facts are and still remain, as has been very well documented in newpapers, scientific journals and in front of hundereds of spectators, (particularly from 1860 to 1865), that Philipp Reis :

1. Did invent the telephone i.e. "Das Tele phon" with the intention of sending speech.
2. Reis as well as many of his colleagues in many demonstrations did transmit speech with "Das Telephon".
3. Reis's "Das Telephon" will transmit speach!

1865 Dublin, Ireland

Stephen Mitchell Yeates purchased a Reis Telephone from Mr. W, Ladd, of London after a few experiments Yeates decided to design and build his own receiver , rejecting the knitting kneedle receiver. His electro-ma gnetic receiver had an armature, a strip of iron, that was attached at one end by a very stiff steel string to a pine wood sounding board over a hollow wooden box, from the base of which rose a metal pillar which supported the electro-magnet. This receive r also contains all the elements of a successful receiver, the armature being of material capable of inductive action, and elastically supported. The sound box provided adequate surface to communitate the vibrations of air.

1870's

Throughout the 1870s there was a signifigant amount of research being done with the telegraph. Although the device had reached its high point in the early 1870's the science community was looking for better ways of sending information at higher speeds over more efficient lines. Much of the research going on at that time was showing the use of electrical currents and their ability to generate sounds. Many of the experiments had tried to develop a device that would reproduce speech over an electrical transmission. The grant money Bell used to fund his experiments was for improving the performance of the telegraph. Bells funders discouraged the direction of sending voice over a telegraph line, calling it a "wild scheme", that they clearly wanted no part of.

The same year Reis dies Leon Scott conducts the an experiment at MIT. He takes a thin stick attached to a membrane. On the other end of the stick he placed a bristle , set to touch a piece of smoked glass. The me mbrane was attached to a cone. When Scott spoke in to the cone the membrane vibrated and the stick scratched lines in the smoked glass. This is the final piece to Bell's first prototype of the telephone.

Bells two improvments in the invention o f the telephone was not any mechinal modification but to use the receiver as the transmitter to work by electro-magnetic induction. Two of Yeates's or Reis's receivers if coupled up with a battery will talk together as transmitter and receiver. This ampli fied the sound. The other discovery was to put a permanent magnet into the transmitter enabling him to dispence with the battery.

1875

On June 2nd, Bell and Watson were tweaking the instruments which were constantly being affected by the weather during Multi Telegraph device experiment's. At one point in the experiment contacts of one of the instruments became welded together. Watson plucked a reed free and Bell heard a distinct sound at the other end. At that moment Bell realized his concept of the "Speaking Telephone" were confirmed. Bell turns to Watson and tells him to construct a working prototype based on his concept for the "Speaking Telephone". The "Gallows" Telephone named for it's appearance used a membrane diaphragm, replaces a wire coil as was used in the Multi Telegraph, and a wooden plug moves a hinged metal strip within a field of an electro-magnet. James Burke makes a "connection" to the principle parts of Bell and Watson's "Gallows" Telep hone. Burke ties Leon Scott's thin stick attached to a membrane, H.C. Oersted's discovery of the electro magnetic field, William Sturgeon's wire around a soft metal bar then Michael Faraday's spinning magnet inside arms of horseshoe- shaped coils of wire, and Helmholtz's experiments using a tuning fork, electro magnet and a piano. Burke has completely removed Reis from the picture of history here. As we hear from Bell himself at two conferences he carefully reviewed Reis's work. Although Bell's German was not good enough to absorb all the information presented by Reis, Reis's models provided Bell with more than ample information to the point to. When Bell files the patent in England he only claims to have improved the phone!

1876 February 14th

Bell applies for the patent on the "Gallows Telephone". Two hours later Elisha Gray applies for a telephone with a receiver constructed on much the same principle as Bell's.

March 7th

Bell receives Patent # 174465. Six hundred lawsuits later it is and remains the most valuable patent in US history.