[kbr2000]

"It was able to squeak, but not to speak. Experts and professors wrestled with it in vain. It refused to transmit one intelligible sentence." [0]

"A translation of Legat's article on Reis' invention was obtained by Thomas Edison prior to his filing his patent application on a telephone in 1877. In correspondence of 1885, Edison credits Reis as having invented "the first telephone", with the limitation that it was "only musical not articulating"." [1]

Fascinating stuff nonetheless, these inventors and their ideas... See also previous experimenters [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reis_telephone

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis#Previous_e...

[Aloha]

Yeah - though Bell's first apparatus wasn't much better - the invention of the carbon microphone is what really what set the telephone on to being a practical device. The rest of it was trying to build a network to connect people - and that was really hard (and capital intensive).

[fragmede]

What blows my mind that we absolutely take for granted today is insulated wires. The technology and supply chain to mine or to find into metal and also to farm cotton and wool and formed that into protective tubing before the advent of plastic insulation. The amount of technology that goes into making a "simple" USB-cable beggars belief if you stop to think about it. Even a simple #2 wooden pencil with an eraser on top is beyond the knowledge of one person to produce, nevermind a USB-c cable!