d years of Reis
would not have given the world the telephonic art for public use. Many
others after Reis tried to devise practical make-and-break telephones,
and all failed; although their success would have rendered them very
valuable as a means of fighting the Bell patent. But the method was a
good starting-point, even if it did not indicate the real path. If Reis
had been willing to experiment with his apparatus so that it did not
make-and-break, he would probably have been the true father of the
telephone, besides giving it the name by which it is known. It was not
necessary to slam the gate open and shut. All that was required was to
keep the gate closed, and rattle the latch softly. Incidentally it
may be noted that Edison in experimenting with the Reis transmitter
recognized at once the defect caused by the make-and-break action, and
sought to keep the gap closed by the use, first, of one drop of water,
and later of several drops. But the water decomposed, and the incurable
defect was still there.

The Reis telephone was brought to America by Dr. P. H. Van der Weyde,
a well-known physicist in his day, and was exhibited by him before a
technical audience at Cooper Union, New York, in 1868, and described
shortly after in the technical press. The apparatus attracted attention,
and a set was secured by Prof. Joseph Henry for the Smithsonian
Institution. There the famous philosopher showed and explained it to
Alexander Graham Bell, when that young and persevering Scotch genius
went to get help and data as to harmonic telegraphy, upon which he was
working, and as to transmitting vocal sounds. Bell took up immediately
and energetically the idea that his two predecessors had dropped--and
reached the goal. In 1875 Bell, who as a student and teacher of vocal
physiology had unusual qualifications for determining feasible methods
of speech transmission, constructed his first pair of magneto telephones
for such a purpose. In February of 1876 his first telephone patent was
applied for, and in March it was issued. The first published account
of the modern speaking telephone was a paper read by Bell before the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston in May of that year;
while at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia the public first
gained any familiarity with it. It was greeted at once with scientific
acclaim and enthusiasm as a distinctly new and great invention, although
at first it was regarded more as a scientif