Cyclopedia of Telephony and Telegraphy Volume I Part 1

Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy.

Vol. 1.

by Kempster Miller, George Patterson, Charles Thom, Robert Millikan, Samuel McMeen.

Foreword

The present day development of the "talking wire" has annihilated both time and s.p.a.ce, and has enabled men thousands of miles apart to get into almost instant communication. The user of the telephone and the telegraph forgets the tremendousness of the feat in the simplicity of its accomplishment; but the man who has made the feat possible knows that its very simplicity is due to the complexity of the principles and appliances involved; and he realizes his need of a practical, working understanding of each principle and its application. The Cyclopedia of Telephony and Telegraphy presents a comprehensive and authoritative treatment of the whole art of the electrical transmission of intelligence.

The communication engineer--if so he may be called--requires a knowledge both of the mechanism of his instruments and of the vagaries of the current that makes them talk. He requires as well a knowledge of plants and buildings, of office equipment, of poles and wires and conduits, of office system and time-saving methods, for the transmission of intelligence is a business as well as an art. And to each of these subjects, and to all others pertinent, the Cyclopedia gives proper s.p.a.ce and treatment.

The sections on Telephony cover the installation, maintenance, and operation of all standard types of telephone systems; they present without prejudice the respective merits of manual and automatic exchanges; and they give special attention to the prevention and handling of operating "troubles." The sections on Telegraphy cover both commercial service and train dispatching. Practical methods of wireless communication--both by telephone and by telegraph--are thoroughly treated.

The drawings, diagrams, and photographs incorporated into the Cyclopedia have been prepared especially for this work; and their instructive value is as great as that of the text itself. They have been used to ill.u.s.trate and illuminate the text, and not as a medium around which to build the text. Both drawings and diagrams have been simplified so far as is compatible with their correctness, with the result that they tell their own story and always in the same language.

The Cyclopedia is a compilation of many of the most valuable Instruction Papers of the American School of Correspondence, and the method adopted in its preparation is that which this School has developed and employed so successfully for many years. This method is not an experiment, but has stood the severest of all tests--that of practical use--which has demonstrated it to be the best yet devised for the education of the busy, practical man.

In conclusion, grateful acknowledgment is due to the staff of authors and collaborators, without whose hearty co-operation this work would have been impossible.

TELEPHONY

INTRODUCTION

The telephone was invented in 1875 by Alexander Graham Bell, a resident of the United States, a native of Scotland, and by profession a teacher of deaf mutes in the art of vocal speech. In that year, Professor Bell was engaged in the experimental development of a system of multiplex telegraphy, based on the use of rapidly varying currents.

During those experiments, he observed an iron reed to vibrate before an electromagnet as a result of another iron reed vibrating before a distant electromagnet connected to the nearer one by wires.

The telephone resulted from this observation with great promptness. In the instrument first made, sound vibrated a membrane diaphragm supporting a bit of iron near an electromagnet; a line joined this simple device of three elements to another like it; a battery in the line magnetized both electromagnet cores; the vibration of the iron in the sending device caused the current in the line to undulate and to vary the magnetism of the receiving device. The diaphragm of the latter was vibrated in consequence of the varying pull upon its bit of iron, and these vibrations reproduced the sound that vibrated the sending diaphragm.

The first public use of the electric telephone was at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. It was there tested by many interested observers, among them Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, the eminent Scotch authority on matters of electrical communication. It was he who contributed so largely to the success of the early telegraph cable system between England and America. Two of his comments which are characteristic are as follows:

To-day I have seen that which yesterday I should have deemed impossible. Soon lovers will whisper their secrets over an electric wire.

Who can but admire the hardihood of invention which devised such slight means to realize the mathematical conception that if electricity is to convey all the delicacies of sound which distinguish articulate speech, the strength of its current must vary continuously as nearly as may be in simple proportion to the velocity of a particle of the air engaged in const.i.tuting the sound.

Contrary to usual methods of improving a new art, the earliest improvement of the telephone simplified it. The diaphragms became thin iron disks, instead of membranes carrying iron; the electromagnet cores were made of permanently magnetized steel instead of temporarily magnetized soft iron, and the battery was omitted from the line. The undulatory current in a system of two such telephones joined by a line is _produced_ in the sending telephone by the vibration of the iron diaphragm. The vibration of the diaphragm in the receiving telephone is _produced_ by the undulatory current. Sound is _produced_ by the vibration of the diaphragm of the receiving telephone.

Such a telephone is at once the simplest known form of electric generator or motor for alternating currents. It is capable of translating motion into current or current into motion through a wide range of frequencies. It is not known that there is any frequency of alternating current which it is not capable of producing and translating. It can produce and translate currents of greater complexity than any other existing electrical machine.

Though possessing these admirable qualities as an electrical machine, the simple electromagnetic telephone had not the ability to transmit speech loudly enough for all practical uses. Transmitters producing stronger telephonic currents were developed soon after the fundamental invention. Some forms of these were invented by Professor Bell himself. Other inventors contributed devices embodying the use of carbon as a resistance to be varied by the motions of the diaphragm.

This general form of transmitting telephone has prevailed and at present is the standard type.

It is interesting to note that the earliest incandescent lamps, as invented by Mr. Edison, had a resistance material composed of carbon, and that such a lamp retained its position as the most efficient small electric illuminant until the recent introduction of metal filament lamps. It is possible that some form of metal may be introduced as the resistance medium for telephone transmitters, and that such a change as has taken place in incandescent lamps may increase the efficiency of telephone transmitting devices.

At the time of the invention of the telephone, there were in existence two distinct types of telegraph, working in regular commercial service. In the more general type, many telegraph stations were connected to a line and whatever was telegraphed between two stations could be read by all the stations of that line. In the other and less general type, many lines, each having a single telegraph station, were centered in an office or "exchange," and at the desire of a user his line could be connected to another and later disconnected from it.

Both of these types of telegraph service were imitated at once in telephone practice. Lines carrying many telephones each, were established with great rapidity. Telephones actually displaced telegraphic apparatus in the exchange method of working in America.

The fundamental principle on which telegraph or telephone exchanges operate, being that of placing any line in communication with any other in the system, gave to each line an ultimate scope so great as to make this form of communication more popular than any arrangement of telephones on a single line. Beginning in 1877, telephone exchanges were developed with great rapidity in all of the larger communities of the United States. Telegraph switching devices were utilized at the outset or were modified in such minor particulars as were necessary to fit them to the new task.

In its simplest form, a telephone system is, of course, a single line permanently joining two telephones. In its next simplest form, it is a line permanently joining more than two telephones. In its most useful form, it is a line joining a telephone to some means of connecting it at will to another.

A telephone exchange central office contains means for connecting lines at will in that useful way. The least complicated machine for that purpose is a switchboard to be operated by hand, having some way of letting the operator know that a connection is wished and a way of making it. The customary way of connecting the lines always has been by means of flexible conductors fitted with plugs to be inserted in sockets. If the switchboard be small enough so that all the lines are within arm's reach of the operator, the whole process is individual, and may be said to be at its best and simplest. There are but few communities, however, in which the number of lines to be served and calls to be answered is small enough so that the entire traffic of the exchange can be handled by a single person. An obvious way, therefore, is to provide as many operators in a central office as may be required by the number of calls to be answered, and to terminate before each of the operators enough of the lines to bring enough work to keep that operator economically occupied. This presents the additional problem, how to connect a line terminating before one operator to a line normally terminating before another operator. The obvious answer is to provide lines from each operator's place of work to each other operator's place, connecting a calling line to some one of these lines which are local within the central office, and, in turn, connecting that chosen local line to the line which is called.

Such lines between operators have come to be known as _trunk lines_, because of the obvious a.n.a.logy to trunk lines of railways between common centers, and such a system of telephone lines may be called a _trunking system_. Very good service has been given and can be given by such an arrangement of local trunks, but the growth in lines and in traffic has developed in most instances certain weaknesses which make it advisable to find speedier, more accurate, and more reliable means.

For the serving of a large traffic from a large number of lines, as is required in practically every city of the world, a very great contribution to the practical art was made by the development of the multiple switchboard. Such a switchboard is merely such a device as has been described for the simpler cases, with the further refinement that within reach of each operator in the central office appears _every line which enters that office_, and this without regard to what point in the switchboard the lines may terminate for the _answering_ of calls. In other words, while each operator answers a certain subordinate group of the total number of lines, each operator may reach, for calling purposes, every line which enters that office. It is probable that the invention and development of the multiple switchboard was the first great impetus toward the wide-spread use of telephone service.

Coincident with the development of the multiple switchboard for manually operated, central-office mechanisms was the beginning of the development of automatic apparatus under the control of the calling subscriber for finding and connecting with a called line. It is interesting to note the general trend of the early development of automatic apparatus in comparison with the development, to that time, of manual telephone apparatus.

While the manual apparatus on the one hand attempted to meet its problem by providing local trunks between the various operators of a central office, and failing of success in that, finally developed a means which placed all the lines of a central office within connecting reach of each operator, automatic telephony, beginning at that point, failed of success in attempting to bring each line in the central office within connecting reach of each connecting mechanism.

In other terms, the first automatic switching equipment consisted of a machine for each line, which machine was so organized as to be able to find and connect its calling line with any called line of the entire central-office group. It may be said that an attempt to develop this plan was the fundamental reason for the repeated failure of automatic apparatus to solve the problem it attacked. All that the earlier automatic system did was to prove more or less successfully that automatic apparatus had a right to exist, and that to demand of the subscriber that he manipulate from his station a distant machine to make the connection without human aid was not fallacious. When it had been recognized that the entire multiple switchboard idea could not be carried into automatic telephony with success, the first dawn of hope in that art may be said to have come.

Success in automatic telephony did come by the re-adoption of the trunking method. As adopted for automatic telephony, the method contemplates that the calling line shall be extended, link by link, until it finds itself lengthened and directed so as to be able to seize the called line in a very much smaller multiple than the total group of one office of the exchange.

A similar curious reversion has taken place in the development of telephone lines. The earliest telephone lines were merely telegraph lines equipped with telephone instruments, and the earliest telegraph lines were planned by Professor Morse to be insulated wires laid in the earth. A lack of skill in preparing the wires for putting in the earth caused these early underground lines to be failures. At the urging of one of his a.s.sociates, Professor Morse consented to place his earliest telegraph lines on poles in the air. Each such line originally consisted of two wires, one for the going and one for the returning current, as was then considered the action. Upon its being discovered that a single wire, using the earth as a return, would serve as a satisfactory telegraph line, such practice became universal. Upon the arrival of the telephone, all lines obviously were built in the same way, and until force of newer circ.u.mstances compelled it, the present metallic circuit without an earth connection did not come into general use.

The extraordinary growth of the number of telephone lines in a community and the development of other methods of electrical utilization, as well as the growth in the knowledge of telephony itself, ultimately forced the wires underground again. At the same time and for the same causes, a telephone line became one of two wires, so that it becomes again the counterpart of the earliest telegraph line of Professor Morse.

Another curious and interesting example of this reversion to type exists in the simple telephone receiver. An early improvement in telephone receivers after Professor Bell's original invention was to provide the necessary magnetism of the receiver core by making it of steel and permanently magnetizing it, whereas Professor Bell's instrument provided its magnetism by means of direct current flowing in the line. In later days the telephone receiver has returned almost to the original form in which Professor Bell produced it and this change has simplified other elements of telephone-exchange apparatus in a very interesting and gratifying way.

By reason of improvements in methods of line construction and apparatus arrangement, the radius of communication steadily has increased. Commercial speech now is possible between points several thousand miles apart, and there is no theoretical reason why communication might not be established between any two points on the earth's surface. The practical reasons of demand and cost may prevent so great an accomplishment as talking half around the earth. So far as science is concerned there would seem to be no reason why this might not be done today, by the careful application of what already is known.

In the United States, telephone service from its beginning has been supplied to users by private enterprise. In other countries, it is supplied by means of governmentally-owned equipment. In general, it may be said that the adequacy and the amount, as well as the quality of telephone service, is best in countries where the service is provided by private enterprise.

Telephone systems in the United States were under the control of the Bell Telephone Company from the invention of the device in 1876 until 1893. The fundamental telephone patent expired in 1893. This opened the telephone art to the general public, because it no longer was necessary to secure telephones solely from the patent-holding company nor to pay royalty for the right to use them, if secured at all.

Manufacturers of electrical apparatus generally then began to make and sell telephones and telephone apparatus, and operating companies, also independent of the Bell organization, began to install and use telephones. At the end of seventeen years of patent monopoly in the United States, there were in operation a little over 250,000 telephones. In the seventeen years since the expiration of the fundamental patent, independent telephone companies throughout the United States have installed and now have in daily successful use over 3,911,400 telephones. In other words, since its first beginnings, independent telephony has brought into continuous daily use nearly sixteen times as many telephones as were brought into use in the equal time of the complete monopoly of the Bell organization.

At the beginning of 1910, there were in service by the Bell organization about 3,633,900 telephones. These with the 3,911,400 independent telephones, make a total of 7,545,300, or about one-twelfth as many telephones as there are inhabitants of the United States. The influence of this development upon the lives of the people has been profound. Whether the influence has been wholly for good may not be so conclusively apparent. Lord Bacon has declared that, excepting only the alphabet and the art of printing, those inventions abridging distance are of the greatest service to mankind. If this be true, it may be said that the invention of telephony deserves high place among the civilizing influences.

There is no industrial art in which the advancement of the times has been followed more closely by practical application than in telephony.

Commercial speech by telephone is possible by means of currents which so far are practically unmeasurable. In other words, it is possible to speak clearly and satisfactorily over a line by means of currents which cannot be read, with certainty as to their amount, by any electrical measuring device so far known. In this regard, telephony is less well fortified than are any of the arts utilizing electrical power in larger quant.i.ties. The real wonder is that with so little knowledge of what takes place, particularly as to amount, those working in the art have been able to do as well as they have. When an exact knowledge of quant.i.ty is easily obtainable, very striking advances may be looked for.

The student of these phases of physical science and industrial art will do well to combine three processes: study of the words of others; personal experimentation; and digestive thought. The last mentioned is the process of profoundest value. On it finally depends mastery. It is not of so much importance how soon the concept shall finally be gained as _that it is gained_. A statement by another may seem lifeless and inert and the meaning of an observation may be obscure. Digestive thought is the only a.s.similative process. The whole art of telephony hangs on taking thought of things. Judge R.F. Taylor of Indiana said of Professor Bell, "It has been said that no man by taking thought may add a cubit to his stature, yet here is a man who, by taking thought, has added not cubits but miles to the lengths of men's tongues and ears."

In observations of many students, it is found that the notion of each must pa.s.s through a certain period of incubation before his private and personal knowledge of Ohm's law is hatched. Once hatched, however, it is his. By just such a process must come each princ.i.p.al addition to his stock of concepts. The periods may vary and practice in the uses of the mind may train it in alertness in its work. If time is required, time should be given, the object always being to keep thinking or re-reading or re-trying until the thought is wholly encompa.s.sed and possessed.

CHAPTER I