According to his own report, the idea of an international language arose out of a conversation he had with one of his parishioners, a semi-literate German peasant whose son had emigrated to America and could no longer be reached by mail because the United States Postal Service couldn't read the father's handwriting.
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Martin Schleyer (18 July 1831 – 16 August 1912) was a German Catholic priest who invented the constructed language Volapük.
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The most prosperous were Volapük (1879, Johann Martin Schleyer), Esperanto (1887 Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof), Latino sine flexione (1903, Giuseppe Peano), Ido (1907, Louis Couturat), Occidental-Interlingue (1922, Edgar de Wahl) and Interlingua (1951, IALA and Alexander Gode), with Esperanto being the only one still gathering a considerable community of active speakers today.
Johann Martin Schleyer, born July 18, 1831, inventor of the constructed language Volapük.