Reis telephone facts for kids

The Reis telephone was an amazing invention created by Philipp Reis. He built this device, which was like an early telephone, and finished his first successful version in October 1861. It was the very first machine to send a voice using electric signals, making it the first modern telephone! Reis even came up with the word "telephone" to describe it.

How the Reis Telephone Was Made

In 1861, Philipp Reis successfully built a device that could pick up sounds. It then changed these sounds into electrical pulses. These pulses traveled through electric wires to another device. This second device then turned the pulses back into sounds that were similar to the original ones. Reis called his new invention the telephon.

In 1862, Reis showed his telephone to Wilhelm von Legat, who worked for the Royal Prussian Telegraph Corps. Legat wrote about it, and his description was later found by Thomas Edison in 1875. Edison used this information to help him develop his own carbon microphone. Edison later said that Reis was the "first inventor of a telephone," even though it mostly sent musical sounds, not clear speech.

The Microphone: A "Singing Station"

Reis thought his invention would be great for broadcasting music. Because of this, he called his microphone the 'singing station'.

The microphone used a thin piece of parchment (like stiff paper) that vibrated when sound hit it. This parchment was placed on top of a closed wooden box with a speaking horn. When you spoke into the horn, the sound made the parchment vibrate.

Above the parchment were two metal strips, often made of platinum. One strip was attached to the center of the parchment. The other strip was mounted above it, pressing lightly against the first one. When the parchment vibrated, it changed how much the two contacts touched. This created an electrical signal that was sent along the telephone line.

Why There Was a Disagreement

There was some debate about how Reis's microphone actually worked. Today, we understand that it changed the resistance between the contacts. However, Reis himself thought the contacts were opening and closing completely. At the time, people believed that a circuit that kept breaking and making contact couldn't send clear speech.

Even though Reis's device had been sending speech since 1861 and was shown to the public from 1863, this idea of a "false theory" was used against him. When Alexander Graham Bell later claimed to have invented the telephone, some argued that Reis's invention wasn't valid because of this supposed "inability" to work. This allowed Bell to claim his invention was new and different.

The Loudspeaker

Reis's speaker worked using something called magnetostriction. This is a process where certain materials change shape when placed in a magnetic field. In his first speaker, he wrapped a coil of wire around an iron knitting needle. He then rested the needle against the F-hole of a violin. When electricity flowed through the coil, the iron needle would slightly shrink, making a clicking sound.

Later versions, like the one shown in the image below, had the iron bar clamped to a box-shaped resonator. This type of speaker wasn't very loud, but it produced sound clearly. It needed a lot of electrical current to work.

This instrument could send continuous musical tones, but speech was often unclear. However, in 1865, a British scientist named David E. Hughes used the Reis telephone and got "good results" with it.

Images for kids

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  Johann Philipp Reis telephone

See also

• Telephone
• History of the telephone
• Invention of the telephone
• Timeline of the telephone
• List of German inventors and discoverers