Invention of the telephone hardly a commercially practical telephone in the modern sense. Thomas Edison tested the Reis equipment and found that "single words, uttered as in reading, speaking and the like, were perceptible indistinctly, notwithstanding here also the inflections of the voice, the modulations of interrogation, wonder, command, etc., attained distinct expression." In 1947, the Reis device was tested by the British company Standard Telephones and Cables (STC). The results also confirmed it could transmit and receive speech with good quality (fidelity), but relatively low intensity. At the time STC was bidding for a contract with Alexander Graham Bell's American Telephone and Telegraph
Reis telephone Reis telephone The Reis telephone was an invention named after Philipp Reis of a telephonelike device he constructed. Reis's first successful work is dated to October 1861. In 1861, Philipp Reis succeeded in creating a device that captured sound, converted it to electrical impulses which were transmitted via electrical wires to another device that transformed these pulses into recognizable sounds similar to the original acoustical source. Reis coined the term "telephon" to describe his device. In 1862, Reis demonstrated his telephone to Wilhelm von Legat, Inspector of the Royal Prussian Telegraph Corps who produced an account of it (Legat, 1862),