Johann Philipp Reis

Johann Philipp Reis ( January 7, 1834 in Gelnhausen, Hesse Electorate; † January 14, 1874 in Friedrichsdorf ) was a German physicist and inventor. He is regarded as a key pioneer of the phone through the development of the first practical device for transmitting sound via electrical lines. In the course of this development rice also invented the contact microphone and gave his apparatus in 1861 the name of the telephone, which was able to prevail internationally later. Another invention of rice were the roller skates, which can be regarded as a forerunner of modern inline skates.

Life

Johann Philipp Reis (nickname Philipp ) was the son of Gelnhausen citizen and master baker Karl Sigismund Rice ( 1807-1843 ) and Marie Catherine ( 1813-1835 ), born Hunchback, to the world and was baptized Lutheran. A year after his birth, his mother died in 1843 he lost his father. His godfather and namesake Philipp Bremer was due to the early death of his parents (1808-1863) to the guardian. Rice came to his grandmother Maria Susanne Fischer ( 1769-1847 ). In 1845 he left with a school exchange his native city and moved from the school to Gelnhäuser citizens Hessian Friedrichsdorf to the Institute Louis Frédéric Garnier, predecessor of today's Philipp-Reis -Schule. He remained there until the age of 14. He then attended the Hasselsche Institute in Frankfurt am Main. On 1 March 1850 he began an apprenticeship at the Frankfurt color merchandise trade Johann Friedrich Beyerbach and attended a trade school. In addition to his professional training he pursued scientific studies at a polytechnic preschool and venerable in the Physics Club in Frankfurt am Main, which he became a member in 1851. Already in 1852, summed up the thoughts rice to conduct research on the voice transmission by electrical current.

After his military service in 1855 at the Hessian hunters in Kassel and various study trips operational rice in Frankfurt again scientific studies and wanted to start in Heidelberg teacher training, but received in 1858 during a stay in Friedrichsdorf of Director Garnier unexpected employment as a teacher of French, Physics, Mathematics and chemistry at the boys' school. In Gelnhausen he married in 1858 Margaretha Schmidt ( 1836-1895 ), the daughter of a master tailor Christian Schmidt and Susanne Bell, bought a house in Friedrichsdorf and engaged in leisure continues with mechanical and electrical engineering. Here he not only developed his rolling skates, but also a velocipede, an early form of bicycle that could be set with the help of hand- controlled levers in motion. In further experiments he conducted research at the solar power. On February 14, 1861 his daughter Elise ( † 1920) was born and two years later, his son Charles ( 1863-1917 ).

In order to enable its students a challenging lessons, he built from simple means vivid models. One was a replica of a pinna, the rice stimulated to his important invention. Overcoming the difficulties of electrical voice transmission became his life's work.

From 1858 to 1863 he worked in Friedrichsdorf on the first prototype of his installations and thereby also invented the contact microphone. After initial failure succeeded him in 1860 with the study of various physiological and physical journals, including those of Hermann von Helmholtz ( 1821-1894 ), the breakthrough. Rice called his invention the telephone - in reference to the telegraph. Overall, in the period three improved further developments of his apparatus incurred. On 26 October 1861 he led a prototype of its remote speaker for the first time publicly before many members of the Physical Society in Frankfurt. His lecture title was about the reproduction of tones to any distance through the mediation of the galvanic current. Then appeared in the annual report 1860/61 of the Association on page 57, a scientific technical report of rice to the telephone: About telephony by the galvanic current.

Encouraged by this initial success, improved rice until 1863 substantially and let his models in larger quantities by Johann Valentin Albert, a Frankfurt merchant and mechanic, produce his apparatus, to sell them internationally as a scientific demonstration object for 8 to 12 dollars. Thus, the German inventor in the art became known worldwide. A far-reaching economic benefits remained rice but fails.

The reason was mainly in the public attitude to the phone in Germany, particularly influenced by the scientific opinion generally negative. A major exception was a communications practitioner, the influential Wilhelm von Legat, head of the Prussian telegraph inspection VIII in Frankfurt am Main. He recognized the potential of the invention and placed an article on Reis'schen invention in a prestigious journal. But without scientific reputation was such a disclosure no resonance. Thus Johann Christian Poggendorff management opposed the publication of the invention in its annals of physics and chemistry and also took the top in spite of legate no intercession in his Biographic- Literary Dictionary of the Exact Sciences on.

Some copies of his equipment came to Russia, Great Britain, Ireland and the USA. 1865 was the British- American inventor David Edward Hughes ( 1831-1900 ) to achieve good results with the German telephone and led the invention in the summer of 1865 the Russian Tsar Alexander II on his summer residence Tsarskoye ago. In the autumn of the same year demonstrated Stephen M. Yeates (1832-1901), a tech-savvy instrument makers from Dublin, the Reis'sche invention with success in front of a select group, which also includes the Irish physicist William Frazer (1824-1899) attended, the performance of the the phone writing bestätigte.Ab 1868, worked in the U.S. with the German invention.

On September 6, 1863 led rice his phone at the Goethe House of Frankfurt am Main Franz Josef of Austria before. In this demonstration he transmitted musical tones. Even before the high-level meeting of natural scientists in Giessen on 21 September 1864, he was again able to arouse great interest and achieved that, now had to observe him the editor of the Annals of Physics and Chemistry, which had 1860 still denied a copy of his treatise on the phone. However, Rice refused this time an article from - in the certainty that his invention will be known without the assistance of Johann Christian Poggendorff. The most recently developed phone already had an electromagnetic call setup. Further improvements were rice but fails. Early ill with tuberculosis, he was always tied to the bed and could not continue to develop his invention. The inventor of the first working phone died on the afternoon of January 14, 1874 at the age of 40 years from the effects of his illness. He was buried at the cemetery Friedrichsdorfer.

Alexander Graham Bell got an early model of the Reis'schen telephone set in 1862 know in Edinburgh. His father promised him and his brothers a prize if they would develop this talking machine. In March 1875 Bell experimented on the American research and educational facility Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC with a newer model of the German telephone and benefited from its basic research. In addition to the documents of the inventor Antonio Meucci, the Bell auswertete also include the studies by Philipp Reis thus one of the central pioneers of the first commercially feasible remote speaker.

Nature, the world's most respected journal Science, described in 1878 the construction of various developmental stages of Reis'schen invention.

The British historian and physicist Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851-1916) was convinced of rice and his invention such that it the first major English-language biography of Philipp Reis: brought out Inventor of the telephone with numerous details, original documents and translations in 1883, in the he came to the conclusion that rice was the inventor of the telephone.

His son was an accountant in the Ferd. Stemler biscuit factory and merchant in Homburg.

Invention of the telephone

During his time at the Institute Garnier in Friedrichsdorf he developed 1860/61, the electrical voice transmission - the telephone. Was the basis for his device for electrical audio transmission the wooden model of a pinna, which he had developed for teaching physics. As reinvented eardrum served him in this school model a piece of natural casings ( sausage skin) with a fine platinum strip as a substitute for the ossicles. Met sound waves to the eardrum of this, it is displaced into oscillations, so that the circuit between the metal strip and a wire spring is interrupted.

In the course of his experiments realized rice that instead of the ear model and a carriage with a membrane horn could be used. This horn resulted in a housing box. He provided the membrane is now a contact of platinum, the other contact, which was mounted in the housing, just touched in the resting state. This contact and an external resistance DC current was passed. Was now place on the membrane, a sound pressure, this was vibrated, resulting in that the contacts are compressed more or less depending on the path of the sound waves. Rice had invented with this experimental setup the contact microphone - the basis for the subsequent carbon microphone, which was also used in the early days of broadcasting.

The result of the simple technique for today's circumstances quickly maxed minimum and maximum values ​​of the imaged sound wave range could lead to power interruption. The sound pressure level was therefore only partially mapped in the current profile. Modern studies show that language is quite understandable if the current fluctuations of the Reis'schen contact microphone through headphones or speakers to play. But even as Rice 's lifetime, the efficiency of his invention abroad has been successfully verified. Overall, the transfer of music, however, succeeded better than by language.

Served as the receiver rice a copper wire coil wrapped around a knitting needle ( speaking knitting needle ). The current pulses emitted by the transmitter is now flowed over the coil, wherein the moving needle implemented the pulses back into sound waves. For reinforcement of the sound to a wooden rice box served as a sounding board.

Monuments, busts, original equipment

After the launch of the phone, the members of the Physical Society to Frankfurt erected in 1878 an obelisk on his grave.

Monuments for the inventor Philipp Reis available in the Eschenheim plant in Frankfurt am Main, built in 1898, and at the bottom of the market town of Gelnhausen. Another monument to Philip Rice is named after him in the Philipp-Reis- passage in Friedrichsdorf. The Friedrichsdorfer monument depicts three dimensions is a sinusoid of individual aluminum pillars that symbolize the vibrations transmitted the phone. In his home ( Hugenottenstraße 93), which is a monument today, is the Philipp-Reis Museum. With regular events there also children rice ' phone is brought near.

In the Department of Telecommunications of the Deutsches Museum in Munich there is a bust, which is very similar to the monument in Gelnhausen. In addition, a street in Karlsruhe, in which there is an administration building Telekom, named after Philipp Reis. An original device can be seen in the treasury of the Museum for Communication in Berlin.

Monument in Frankfurt am Main, 2004

Stamp of the German Federal Post Office from 1952: 75 years of telephone ( in Germany )

Stamp of the German Federal Post of 1961: 100 years of Philipp-Reis- Phone

Commemorative 5 Mark of the GDR for the 100th anniversary of the death of Philipp Reis 1974

Stamp of the German Federal Post Office from 1984 to mark the 150th birthday of rice '

Prices

The Federal Minister of Posts donated 1952 Philipp-Reis- badge. The VDE, the German Telekom and the cities of Friedrichsdorf Gelnhausen and awarded every two years to Johann- Philipp- Reis Award for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of telecommunications.

Bibliography

• Philipp Reis: About telephony by galvanic current, re- prints of the year reports of the Physical Society to Frankfurt in supplementary sheets to the annals of physics; Barth, Frankfurt q.s., 1897
• Philipp Reis: Communication on the phone, re- prints of the year reports of the Physical Society to Frankfurt in supplementary sheets to the annals of physics; Barth, Frankfurt q.s., 1897