Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Telephone In 18th Century

Telephones connected to The Atlanta Telephonic Exchange were of the "magneto" type. The first one of these was the Butterstamp phone.

The Butterstamp Phone - c1879Like the Box Phone, this phone had a combination receiver/transmitter. The phone is named after the hand-held piece that looked like a butter stamp that was common at the time. You had to talk into it and then quickly place it to your ear to listen. The white button was used to signal the operator.

The Butterstamp phone transmitted sound very poorly. It was soon replaced by the first magneto crank phones with the newly invented Blake Transmitter.

Three Box Magneto Phone - c1882The "Three Box Phone" consisted of three wooden boxes on the wall with a hand-held receiver, a Blake Transmitter, a magneto crank, and a battery box. To place a call, you turned the crank to ring the operator, then picked up the receiver. The operator would then answer. You gave the operator the name of the party that you wanted and the operator connected you.

At the end of your call you had to signal the operator to disconnect the call. To do this, you had to hang up the receiver and turn the crank to produce a short ring. This was called "Ringing Off".

Source : www.atlantatelephonehistory.info/part1.html

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