ance another disc which will
simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... It is certain that, in a
more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by electricity.
I have made experiments in this direction; they are delicate and demand
time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a favourable
result.'[See Du Moncel's EXPOSE DES APPLICATIONS, etc.]

Bourseul deserves the credit of being perhaps the first to devise an
electric telephone and try to make it; but to Reis belongs the honour of
first realising the idea. A writer may plot a story, or a painter invent
a theme for a picture; but unless he execute the work, of what benefit
is it to the world? True, a suggestion in mechanics may stimulate
another to apply it in practice, and in that case the suggester is
entitled to some share of the credit, as well as the distinction of
being the first to think of the matter. But it is best when the original
deviser also carries out the work; and if another should independently
hit upon the same idea and bring it into practice, we are bound to
honour him in full, though we may also recognise the merit of his
predecessor.

Bourseul's idea seems to have attracted little notice at the time, and
was soon forgotten. Even the Count du Moncel, who was ever ready to
welcome a promising invention, evidently regarded it as a fantastic
notion. It is very doubtful if Reis had ever heard of it. He was led to
conceive a similar apparatus by a study of the mechanism of the human
ear, which he knew to contain a membrane, or 'drum,' vibrating under the
waves of sound, and communicating its vibrations through the hammer-bone
behind it to the auditory nerve. It therefore occurred to him, that if
he made a diaphragm in imitation of the drum, and caused it by vibrating
to make and break the circuit of an electric current, he would be able
through the magnetic power of the interrupted current to reproduce the
original sounds at a distance.

In 1837-8 Professor Page, of Massachusetts, had discovered that' a
needle or thin bar of iron, placed in the hollow of a coil or bobbin of
insulated wire, would emit an audible 'tick' at each interruption of a
current, flowing in the coil, and that if these separate ticks followed
each other fast enough, by a rapid interruption of the current, they
would run together into a continuous hum, to which he gave the name of
'galvanic music.' The pitch of this note would correspond to the rate of