Note 6 — Chapter III · THE CLAIM OF THE INVENTOR.

The name “Telephone” had already been applied by Sir C. Wheatstone (1831) to an acoustic arrangement for transmitting sounds through wooden rods to a distant place in a purely mechanical manner. It is needless to observe that speech as well as music can be thus transmitted; and though Wheatstone gave telephonic concerts, this does not prove (nor do telephonic concerts given through Reis’s instrument prove) that speech could not be transmitted also. The name “Fernsprecher,” now used in Germany for the Telephone, was only suggested in 1877 by Dr. Stephan, Postmaster of the German Empire, in obedience to the absurd fashion which has raged since 1871 in Germany of rejecting words of classic derivation.