Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone A Biographical Sketch

"Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone" by Silvanus P. Thompson is a biographical sketch written in the late 19th century. This work delves into the life and contributions of Philipp Reis, an often-overlooked inventor, specifically focusing on his development of early telephone technology. The book aims to both celebrate Reis's achievements and provide a fair evaluation of his contributions to communication technology without bias. The opening of the text introduces Philipp Reis’s early life, detailing his upbringing in Gelnhausen and education that fostered his interest in science and languages. It chronicles his journey from a master baker's son to a passionate inventor, highlighting key educational milestones and pivotal moments that shaped his innovative spirit. The narrative begins to weave in his experiments and vision for a device that could transmit sound over distances, ultimately leading to his invention, the "Telephon," setting the stage for the more detailed exploration of his actual work and the recognition it received—or failed to receive—in the scientific community. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Silvanus Phillips Thompson was an English professor of physics at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury, England. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1891 and was known for his work as an electrical engineer and as an author. Thompson's most enduring publication is his 1910 text Calculus Made Easy, which teaches the fundamentals of infinitesimal calculus, and is still in print. Thompson also wrote a popular physics text, Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism, as well as biographies of Lord Kelvin and Michael Faraday.