nkly to Bell in 1877, "I do not claim the credit of inventing
it"; and third, Gray the CLAIMANT, who endeavored to prove in 1886 that
he was the original inventor. His real position in the matter was once
well and wittily described by his partner, Enos M. Barton, who said: "Of
all the men who DIDN'T invent the telephone, Gray was the nearest."

It is now clearly seen that the telephone owes nothing to Gray. There
are no Gray telephones in use in any country. Even Gray himself, as he
admitted in court, failed when he tried to make a telephone on the lines
laid down in his caveat. The final word on the whole matter was recently
spoken by George C. Maynard, who established the telephone business in
the city of Washington. Said Mr. Maynard:

"Mr. Gray was an intimate and valued friend of mine, but it is no
disrespect to his memory to say that on some points involved in the
telephone matter, he was mistaken. No subject was ever so thoroughly
investigated as the invention of the speaking telephone. No patent has
ever been submitted to such determined assault from every direction as
Bell's; and no inventor has ever been more completely vindicated. Bell
was the first inventor, and Gray was not."

After Gray, the weightiest challenger who came against Bell was
Professor Amos E. Dolbear, of Tufts College. He, like Gray, had written
a letter of applause to Bell in 1877. "I congratulate you, sir," he
said, "upon your very great invention, and I hope to see it supplant
all forms of existing telegraphs, and that you will be successful in
obtaining the wealth and honor which is your due." But one year later,
Dolbear came to view with an opposition telephone. It was not an
imitation of Bell's, he insisted, but an improvement upon an electrical
device made by a German named Philip Reis, in 1861.

Thus there appeared upon the scene the so-called "Reis telephone," which
was not a telephone at all, in any practical sense, but which served
well enough for nine years or more as a weapon to use against the Bell
patents. Poor Philip Reis himself, the son of a baker in Frankfort,
Germany, had hoped to make a telephone, but he had failed. His machine
was operated by a "make-and-break" current, and so could not carry
the infinitely delicate vibrations made by the human voice. It could
transmit the pitch of a sound, but not the QUALITY. At its best, it
could carry a tune, but never at any time a spoken sentence. Reis, in
his later years, re