Title: Who really invented the telephone?
Headings: Who Really Invented the Telephone?
Who Really Invented the Telephone?
Content: As a teacher of acoustics, Bell knew that the  one indispensable requirement of a telephone is that it shall transmit the WHOLE of a  sound, and not merely the pitch of it. Such scientists as Lord Kelvin, Joseph Henry, and  Edison had seen the little Reis instrument years before Bell invented the telephone; but  they regarded it as a mere musical toy. It was "not in any sense a speaking  telephone," said Lord Kelvin. And Edison, when trying to put the Reis machine in the  most favorable light, admitted humorously that when he used a Reis transmitter he  generally "knew what was coming; and knowing what was coming, even a Reis  transmitter, pure and simple, reproduces sounds which seem almost like that which was  being transmitted; but when the man at the other end did not know what was coming, it was  very seldom that any word was recognized." In the course of the Dolbear lawsuit, a Reis  machine was brought into court, and created much amusement. It was able to squeak, but not  to speak. Experts and professors wrestled with it in vain.