The horse won't eat cucumber salad. It all began with these five words spoken on October 26, 1861. With this sentence, which hardly anyone remembers and which has made history, not only telephone history, the triumphal march of wireless individual communication began. Its inventor, the teacher Philipp Reis, born in Gelnhausen, called the technical apparatus "telephone." What began with the transmission of a first noise, then of sound and finally of more or less clearly audible words, has since been developed to a high degree of perfection: automatic dialing, speed dialing, direct dialing, telephone conference, car phone are just a few keywords. New media such as telecopy and screen text are not possible without telephone lines. The telephone has become a multifunctional medium in our country - the limits of the mogul seem to be over.