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281
Heroes of the Telegraph
·
John Munro
161
Reis
had
studied
the
organs
of
hearing,
and
the
idea
of
an
apparatus
for
transmitting
sound
by
means
of
electricity
had
been
floating
in
his
mind
for
years.
Incited
by
his
lessons
on
physics,
in
the
year
1860
he
attacked
the
problem,
and
was
rewarded
with
success.
In
1862
he
again
tried
Poggendorff,
with
an
account
of
his
'Telephon,'
as
he
called
it;[The
word
'telephone'
occurs
in
Timbs'
REPOSITORY
OF
SCIENCE
AND
ART
for
1845,
in
connection
With
a
signal
trumpet
operated
by
compressed
air.]
but
his
second
offering
was
rejected
like
the
first.
The
learned
professor,
it
seems,
regarded
the
transmission
of
speech
by
electricity
as
a
chimera;
but
Reis,
in
the
bitterness
of
wounded
feeling,
attributed
the
failure
to
his
being
'only
a
poor
schoolmaster.'
Since
the
invention
of
the
telephone,
attention
has
been
called
to
the
fact
that,
in
1854,
M.
Charles
Bourseul,
a
French
telegraphist,
[Happily
still
alive
(1891).]
had
conceived
a
plan
for
conveying
sounds
and
even
speech
by
electricity.
'Suppose,'
he
explained,
'that
a
man
speaks
near
a
movable
disc
sufficiently
flexible
to
lose
none
of
the
vibrations
of
the
voice;
that
this
disc
alternately
makes
and
breaks
the
currents
from
a
battery:
you
may
have
at
a
distance
another
disc
which
will
simultaneously
execute
the
same
vibrations....
It
is
certain
that,
in
a
more
or
less
distant
future,
speech
will
be
transmitted
by
electricity.
I
have
made
experiments
in
this
direction;
they
are
delicate
and
demand
time
and
patience,
but
the
approximations
obtained
promise
a
favourable
result.'[See
Du
Moncel's
EXPOSE
DES
APPLICATIONS,
etc.]
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