ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Philipp Reis

Okay, kiddo, let me tell you about Philipp Reis. He was a very smart man who lived a long time ago, in the 1800s. He was from Germany and he loved to play with sounds and music.

One day, he had an idea. He thought, "What if I could use sounds to talk to people who are far away?" And so, he started working on something called the "telephone".

Basically, the telephone is a device that allows you to talk to someone who is far away by using wires and sounds. Philipp Reis was one of the people who helped invent it.

He worked really hard on his telephone idea, and he even made a working prototype that could transmit sounds over a wire! Unfortunately, he didn't have enough money or resources to make it really popular, and other inventors like Alexander Graham Bell ended up getting more famous for the telephone.

But we still remember Philipp Reis for his contributions to this amazing invention that lets us talk to people even if they are far away.