A new World Postcard Day Card from Ralf. Ralf lives in Friedrichsdorf, a town of 25 500 people located in the Taunus (mountain range in Hesse).  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 inve...