Knitting Needles and the Telephone

On 26th of October, 150 years ago, in 1861, Philipp Reis from Gelnhausen (Hesse, Germany) managed the first telephone connection and the first sentence ever spoken was: 'The horse doesn't eat cucumber salad.'

What has this to do with knitting needles you ask? Easy, says I ;-D
Reis used his Telephone (the word also invented by Reis) to transmit his phrase "The horse does not eat cucumber salad". This phrase in German is hard to understand acoustically so Reis used it to prove if speech can be recognized on another side successfully.

Reis's speaker worked by magnetostriction. In his first receiver he wound a coil of wire around an iron knitting needle and rested the needle against the "F" hole of a violin. As current passed through the needle, the iron shrank and a click was formed. The image shown below is a more advanced version where the iron bar is clamped to a cigar-box-shaped resonator. This receiver is very insensitive. It produces weak sound but has good fidelity. It requires very high current and is a current-sensitive device rather than a voltage-sensitive device.
Reis was marginally successful. This instrument could transmit continuous musical tones but produced indistinct speech.

Actually, I prefer to knit with my needles... But interesting nonetheless. I always thought, Bell was the first...