Myth: Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

Fact: In 1850, more than twenty-five years before Alexander Graham Bell’s invention, a German school teacher named Philip Reis created what he described as an “artificial ear”. He linked this “artificial ear” (essentially a microphone), to the strings of a violin (the speaker). This device which he called the Telephone was presented to Frankfurt’s Physics Association (Der Physikalische Verein) on October 26, 1861. Although he was able to make it work at distances of up to 100m, it was not good enough to meet with commercial success. It wasn’t until 1876, that Bell filed the patent that earned him the title of the inventor of the telephone.