Johann Philipp Reis (1834-1874) is Friedrichsdorf's most famous citizen. He is the inventor of the electric transmission of speech (telephone)... This was news to me as
we are taught it was Alexander Graham Bell. It turns out that Reis first described his idea in a paper entitled, On the Radiation of Electricity, which was rejected by a Professor Poggendorff for publication in the Annalen der Physik.
In 1860, Reis built the first prototype of a telephone which covered a distance of 100 metres. He tried to interest Professor Poggendorff in 1862 but was again rejected. People in Germany was uninterested in the telefon, especially Wilhelm von Legat, inspector of the Royal Prussian Telegraph Corps. Instead a Professor Vanderwyde took the prototype to the United States where it seemed to gain interest.
Alexander Graham Bell took the invention and improved upon it.
In 1947, the Reis telefon was tested by Standard Telephones and Cables in the United Kingdom and proved it could faintly transmit and receive speech. However Standard's chairman, Sir Frank Gill, decided to cover up the results as it was negotiating a contract with Alexander Bell's company American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and feared losing the contract. Bell continued to be generally accepted as the inventor of the telephone.
Friedrichsdorf has a museum dedicated to Reis. There is also a school, Philipp-Reis-Schule, is named for him.
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