The Reis telephone, an invention by Johann Philipp Reis, a self-taught German scientist and inventor was constructed in 1861. It is considered by many today as the first make-and-break telephone, which thus predates Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, but the actual credit for the telephone's invention is a subject but great dispute to this day.

Reis was inspired to create the phone after reading a French article in 1854 by Charles Bourseul, which talked about creating microphone-like devices.

The Reis telephone

Johann Philipp Reis demonstrated his work to Inspector of the Royal Prussian Telegraph Corps Wilhelm von Legat in 1862. Legat produced an account of the demonstration and its transalation was acquired by none other than Thomas Edison himself, who acknowledged his debt to Reis in a writeup.

The Reis telephone was marginally successful. While the instrument could transmit continuous musical tones it produced indistinct speech. In 1865, however, British scientist David E. Hughes used Reis' telephone with "good results".

Reis. has also been credited for coining the term telephone to describe his invention. In addition to transmitting musical sounds, Reis also used his invention to transmit his phrase, "Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat". This German phrase, roughly transalated as, 'The horse does not eat cucumber salad", which is difficult to understand acoustically was used by Reis to prove if speech can be recognized on another side successfully.