On Arie de Jong's Revision of Volapük (1931) from Journal of Planned Languages by Ed Robertson. Volapük was first published in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer (1831-1912) and for a brief period achieved immense popularity before being eclipsed by Esperanto. Indeed Volapük is second or third after Esperanto, and possibly Ido, in terms of its historical impact as a constructed language, the number of speakers it once had, number of copies of publications and so on. The demise of Volapük is usually put down to four factors: Volapük (1880) J. M. Schleyer