Cyclopedia of Telephony and Telegraphy Volume I Part 19

_Magneto Telephone._ The term magneto telephone, as it was originally employed in telephony, referred to the type of instrument now known as a receiver, particularly when this was used also as a transmitter. As the use of this instrument as a transmitter has practically ceased, the term magneto telephone has lost its significance as applying to the receiver, and, since many telephones are equipped with magneto generators for calling purposes, the term magneto telephone has, by common consent, come to be used to designate any telephone including, as a part of its equipment, a magneto generator. Magneto telephones usually, also, include local batteries for furnis.h.i.+ng the transmitter with current, and this has led to these telephones being frequently called local battery telephones. However, a local battery telephone is not necessarily a magneto telephone and _vice versa_, since sometimes magneto telephones have no local batteries and sometimes local battery telephones have no magnetos. Nearly all of the telephones which are equipped with magneto generators are, however, also equipped with local batteries for talking purposes, and, therefore, the terms magneto telephone and local battery telephone usually refer to the same thing.

_Common-Battery Telephone._ Common-battery telephones, on the other hand, are those which have no local battery and no magneto generator, all the current for both talking and signaling being furnished from a common source of current at the central office.

_Wall and Desk Telephones._ Again we may cla.s.sify telephones or telephone sets in accordance with the manner in which their various parts are a.s.sociated with each other for use, regardless of what parts are contained in the set. We may refer to all sets adapted to be mounted on a wall or part.i.tion as _wall telephones_, and to all in which the receiver, transmitter, and hook are provided with a standard of their own to enable them to rest on any flat surface, such as a desk or table, as _desk telephones_. These latter are also referred to as portable telephones and as portable desk telephones.

In general, magneto or local battery telephones differ from common-battery telephones in their component parts, the difference residing princ.i.p.ally in the fact that the magneto telephone always has a magneto generator and usually a local battery, while the common-battery telephone has no local source of current whatever. On the other hand, the differences between wall telephones and desk telephones are princ.i.p.ally structural, and obviously either of these types of telephones may be for common-battery or magneto work. The same component parts go to make up a desk telephone as a wall telephone, provided the two instruments are adapted for the same cla.s.s of service, but the difference between the two lies in the structural features by which these same parts are a.s.sociated with each other and protected from exposure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 142. Magneto Wall Set]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 143. Magneto Wall Set]

Magneto-Telephone Sets. _Wall._ In Fig. 142 is shown a familiar type of wall set. The containing box includes within it all of the working parts of the apparatus except that which is necessarily left outside in order to be within the reach of the user. Fig. 143 shows the same set with the door open. This gives a good idea of the ordinary arrangement of the apparatus within. It is seen that the polarized bell or ringer has its working parts mounted on the inside of the door or cover of the box, the tapper projecting through so as to play between the gongs on the outside. Likewise the transmitter arm, which supports the transmitter and allows its adjustment up and down to accommodate itself to the height of the user, is mounted on the front of the door, and the conductors leading to it may be seen fastened to the rear of the door in Fig. 143.

In some wall sets the wires leading to the bell and transmitter are connected to the wiring of the rest of the set through the hinges of the door, thus allowing the door to be opened and closed repeatedly without breaking off the wires. In order to always insure positive electrical contact between the stationary and movable parts of the hinge a small wire is wound around the hinge pin, one end being soldered to the stationary part and the other end to the movable part of the hinge. In other forms of wall set the wires to the bell and the transmitter lead directly from the stationary portion of the cabinet to the back of the door, the wires being left long enough to have sufficient flexibility to allow the door to be opened and closed without injuring the wires.

At the upper portion of the box there is mounted the hook switch, this being, in this case, of the short lever type. The lever of the hook projects through the side of the box so as to make the hook available as a support for the receiver. Immediately at the right of the hook switch is mounted the induction coil, and immediately below this the generator, its crank handle projecting through the right-hand side of the box so as to be available for use there. The generator is usually mounted on a transverse shelf across the middle of the cabinet, this shelf serving to form a compartment below it in which the dry battery of two or three cells is placed.

The wall telephone-set cabinets have a.s.sumed a mult.i.tude of forms.

When wet cells rather than dry cells were ordinarily employed, as was the case up to about the year 1895, the magneto generator, polarized bell, and hook switch were usually mounted in a rectangular box placed at the top of a long backboard. Immediately below this on the backboard was mounted the transmitter arm, and sometimes the base of this included the induction coil. Below this was the battery box, this being a large affair usually adapted to accommodate two and sometimes three ordinary LeClanche cells side by side.

The dry cell has almost completely replaced the wet cell in this country, and as a result, the general type of wall set as shown in Figs. 142 and 143, has gradually replaced the old wet-cell type, which was more c.u.mbrous and unsightly. It is usual on wall sets to provide some sort of a shelf, as indicated in Fig. 142, for the convenience of the user in making notes and memoranda.

_Desk._ In the magneto desk-telephone sets, the so-called desk stand, containing the transmitter, the receiver, and the hook switch, with the standard upon which they are mounted, is shown in Fig. 144. This desk stand evidently does not comprise the complete equipment for a magneto desk-telephone set, since the generator, polarized bell, and battery are lacking. The generator and bell are usually mounted together in a box, either on the under side of the desk of the user or on the wall within easy reach of his chair. Connections are made between the apparatus in the desk stand proper and the battery, generator, and bell by means of flexible conducting cords, these carrying a plurality of conductors, as required by the particular circuit of the telephone in question. Such a complete magneto desk-telephone set is shown in Fig. 145, this being one of the types manufactured by the Stromberg-Carlson Manufacturing Company.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 144. Desk Stand]

A great variety of arrangements of the various parts of magneto desk-telephone apparatus is employed in practice. Sometimes, as shown in Fig. 145, the magneto bell box is equipped with binding posts for terminating all of the conductors in the cord, the line wires also running to some of these binding posts.

In the magneto-telephone set ill.u.s.trated the box is made large enough to accommodate only the generator and call bell, and the batteries are mounted elsewhere, as in a drawer of the desk, while in other cases there is no other equipment but that shown in the cut, the batteries being mounted within the magneto bell box itself. In still other cases, the polarized bell is contained in one box, the generator in another, the batteries in the drawer of the desk, the induction coil being mounted either in the base of the desk stand, in the bell box, or in the generator box. In such cases all of the circuits of the various scattered parts are wired to a terminal strip, located at some convenient point, this strip containing terminals for all the wires leading from the various parts and for the line wires themselves. By combining the various wires on the terminals of this terminal strip, the complete circuits of the telephone are built up. In still other cases the induction coil is mounted on the terminal strip and separate wires or sets of wires are run to the polarized bell and generator, to the desk stand itself, and to the batteries. These various arrangements are subject largely to the desire or personal ideas of the manufacturer or user. All of them work on the same principle so far as the operation of the talking and signaling circuits is concerned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 145. Magneto Desk Set]

Circuits of Magneto-Telephone Sets. Magneto telephones, whether of the wall or desk type, may be divided into two general cla.s.ses, series and bridging, according to whether the magnet of the bell is included in series or bridge relation with the telephone line when the hook is down.

_Series._ In the so-called series telephone line, where several telephones are placed in series in a single line circuit, the employment of the series type of telephone results in all of the telephone bells being in series in the line circuit. This means that the voice currents originating in the telephones that are in use at a given time must pa.s.s in series through the magnets of the bells of the stations that are not in use. In order that these magnets, through which the voice currents must pa.s.s, may interfere to as small a degree as possible with the voice currents, it is common to employ low-resistance magnets in series telephones, these magnets being wound with comparatively few turns and on rather short cores so that the impedance will be as small as possible. Likewise, since the generators are required to ring all of the bells in series, they need not have a large current output, but must have sufficient voltage to ring through all of the bells in series and through the resistance of the line. For this reason the generators are usually of the three-bar type and sometimes have only two bars.

In Fig. 146 are shown, in simplified form, the circuits of an ordinary series telephone. The receiver in this is shown as being removed from the hook and thus the talking apparatus is brought into play. The line wires _1_ and _2_ connect respectively to the binding posts _3_ and _4_ which form the terminals of the instrument. When the hook is up, the circuit between the binding posts _3_ and _4_ includes the receiver and the secondary winding of the induction coil, together with one of the upper contacts _5_ of the switch hook and the hook lever itself. This completes the circuit for receiving speech. The hook switch is provided with another upper contact _6_, between which and the contact _5_ is connected the local circuit containing the transmitter, the battery, and the primary of the induction coil in series. The primary and the secondary windings are connected together at one end and connected with the switch contact _5_, as shown. It is thus seen that when the hook is up the circuit through the receiver is automatically closed and also the local circuit containing the primary, the battery, and the transmitter. Thus, all the conditions for transmitting and receiving speech are fulfilled.

[Fig. 146. Circuit of Series Magneto Set]

When the hook is down, however, the receiving and transmitting circuits are broken, but another circuit is completed by the engagement of the hook-switch lever with the lower hook contact _7_.

Between this contact and one side of the line is connected the polarized ringer and the generator. With the hook down, therefore, the circuit may be traced from the line wire _1_ to binding post _3_, thence through the generator shunt to the call bell, and thence through the lower switching contact _7_ to the binding post _4_ and line wire _2_. The generator shunt, as already described in Chapter VIII, normally keeps the generator shunted out of circuit. When, however, the generator is operated the shunt is broken, which allows the armature of the generator to come into the circuit in series with the winding of the polarized bell. The normal shunting of the generator armature from the circuit of the line is advantageous in several ways. In the first place, the impedance of the generator winding is normally cut out of the circuit so that in the case of a line with several stations the talking or voice currents do not have to flow through the generator armatures at the stations which are not in use. Again, the normal shunting of the generator tends to save the generator armature from injury by lightning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 147. Circuit of Series Magneto Set.]

The more complete circuits of a series magneto telephone are shown in Fig. 147. In this the line binding posts are shown as _1_ and _2_. At the bottom of the telephone cabinet are four other binding posts marked _3_, _4_, _5_, and _6_. Of these _3_ and _4_ serve for the receiver terminals and _5_ and _6_ for the transmitter and battery terminals. The circuits of this diagram will be found to be essentially the same as those of Fig. 146, except that they are shown in greater detail. This particular type of circuit is one commonly employed where the generator, ringer, hook switch, and induction coil are all mounted in a so-called magneto bell box at the top of the instrument, and where the transmitter is mounted on an arm just below this box, and the battery in a separate compartment below the transmitter. The only wiring that has to be done between the bell box and the other parts of the instrument in a.s.sembling the complete telephone is to connect the receiver to the binding posts _3_ and _4_ and to connect the battery and transmitter circuit to the binding posts _5_ and _6_.

_Bridging._ In other cases, where several telephones are placed on a single-line circuit, the bells are arranged in multiple across the line. For this reason their magnets are wound with a very great number of turns and consequently to a high resistance. In order to further increase the impedance, the cores are made long and heavy. Since the generators on these lines must be capable of giving out a sufficient volume of current to divide up between all of the bells in multiple, it follows that these generators must have a large current output, and at the same time a sufficient voltage to ring the bells at the farthest end of the line. Such instruments are commonly called bridging instruments, on account of the method of connecting their bells across the circuit of the line.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 148. Circuit of Bridging Magneto Set]

The fundamental characteristic of the bridging telephone is that it contains three possible bridge paths across the line wires. The first of these bridge paths is through the talking apparatus, the second through the generator, and the third through the ringer. This is shown in simplified form in Fig. 148. The talking apparatus is a.s.sociated with the two upper contacts of the hook switch in the usual manner and needs no further description. The generator is the second separate bridge path, normally open, but adapted to be closed when the generator is operated, this automatic closure being performed by the movement of the crank shaft. The third bridge contains the polarized bell, and this, as a rule, is permanently closed. Sometimes, however, the arrangement is such that the bell path is normally closed through the switch which is operated by the generator crank shaft, and this path is automatically broken when the generator is operated, at which time, also, the generator path is automatically closed. This arrangement brings about the result that the generator never can ring its own bell, because its switch always operates to cut out the bell at its own station just before the generator itself is cut into the circuit.

In Fig. 149 is shown the complete circuit of a bridging telephone.

The circuit given in this figure is for a local-battery wall set similar in type to that shown in Figs. 142 and 143. A simplified diagrammatic arrangement is shown in the lower left-hand corner of this figure, and from a consideration of this it will be seen that the bell circuit across the line is normally completed through the two right-hand normally closed contacts of the switch on the generator.

When, however, the generator is operated these two contacts are made to disengage each other while the long spring of the generator switch engages the left-hand spring and thus brings the generator itself into the circuit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 149. Circuit of Bridging Magneto Set]

Of the three binding posts, _1_, _2_, and _3_, at the top of Fig. 149, _1_ and _2_ are for connecting with the line wires, while _8_ is for a ground connection, acting in conjunction with the lightning arrester mounted at the top of the telephone and indicated at _4_ in Fig. 149.

This has no function in talking or ringing, and will be referred to more fully in Chapter XIX. Suffice it to say at this point that these arresters usually consist of two conducting bodies, one connected permanently to each of the line binding posts, and a third conducting body connected to the ground binding post. These three conducting bodies are in close proximity but carefully insulated from each other; the idea being that when the line wires are struck by lightning or subjected otherwise to a dangerous potential, the charge on the line will jump across the s.p.a.ce between the conducting bodies and pa.s.s harmlessly to ground.

NOTE. The student should practice making simplified diagrams from actual wiring diagrams. The difference between the two is that one is laid out for ease in understanding it, while the other is laid out to show the actual course of the wires as installed.

If the large detailed circuit of Fig. 149 be compared with the small theoretical circuit in the same figure, the various conducting paths will be found to be the same. Such a simplified circuit does more to enable one to grasp the fundamental scheme of a complex circuit than much description, since it shows at a glance the general arrangement. The more detailed circuits are, however, necessary to show the actual paths followed by the wiring.

The circuits of desk stands do not differ from those of wall sets in any material degree, except as may be necessitated by the fact that the various parts of the telephone set are not all mounted in the same cabinet or on the same standard. To provide for the necessary relative movement between the desk stand and the other portions of the set, flexible conductors are run from the desk stand itself to the stationary portions of the equipment, such as the battery and the parts contained in the generator and bell box.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 150. Circuit of Bridging Magneto Desk Set]

In Fig. 150 is shown the circuit of the Stromberg-Carlson magneto desk-telephone set, ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 145. This diagram needs no explanation in view of what has already been said. The conductors, leading from the desk-stand group of apparatus to the bell-box group of apparatus, are grouped together in a flexible cord, as shown in Fig.

145, and are connected respectively to the various binding posts or contact points within the desk stand at one end and at the base of the bell box at the other end. These flexible conductors are insulated individually and covered by a common braided covering. They usually are individualized by having a colored thread woven into their insulating braid, so that it is an easy matter to identify the two ends of the same conductor at either end of the flexible cord or cable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 151. Common-Battery Wall Set]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 152. Common-Battery Wall Set]

Common-Battery Telephone Sets. Owing to the fact that common-battery telephones contain no sources of current, they are usually somewhat simpler than the magneto type. The component parts of a common-battery telephone, whether of the wall or desk type, are the transmitter, receiver, hook switch, polarized bell, condenser, and sometimes an induction coil. The purpose of the condenser is to prevent direct or steady currents from pa.s.sing through the windings of the ringer while the ringer is connected across the circuit of the line during the time when the telephone is not in use. The requirements of common-battery signaling demand that the ringer shall be connected with the line so as to be receptive of a call at any time while the telephone is not in use. The requirements also demand that no conducting path shall normally exist between the two sides of the line. These two apparently contradictory requirements are met by placing a condenser in series with the ringer so that the ringer will be in a path that will readily transmit the alternating ringing currents sent out from the central-office generator, while at the same time the condenser will afford a complete bar to the pa.s.sage of steady currents. Sometimes the condenser is also used as a portion of the talking apparatus, as will be pointed out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIN OFFICE, KANSAS CITY HOME TELEPHONE CO., KANSAS CITY, MO.]

_Wall._ In Figs. 151 and 152 are given two views of a characteristic form of common-battery wall-telephone set, made by the Stromberg-Carlson Manufacturing Company. The common-battery wall set has usually taken this general form. In it the transmitter is mounted on an adjustable arm at the top of the backboard, while the box containing the bell and all working parts of the instrument is placed below the transmitter, the top of the box affording a shelf for writing purposes. In Fig. 151 are shown the hook switch and the receiver; just below these may be seen the magnets of the polarized bell, back of which is shown a rectangular box containing the condenser. Immediately in front of the ringer magnets is the induction coil.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 153. Stromberg-Carlson Common-Battery Wall Set]

In Fig. 153 are shown the details of the circuit of this instrument.

This figure also includes a simplified circuit arrangement from which the principles involved may be more readily understood. It is seen that the primary of the induction coil and the transmitter are included in series across the line. The secondary of the induction coil, in series with the receiver, is connected also across the line in series with a condenser and the transmitter.

_Hotel._ Sometimes, in order to economize s.p.a.ce, the shelf of common-battery wall sets is omitted and the entire apparatus mounted in a small rectangular box, the front of which carries the transmitter mounted on the short arm or on no arm at all. Such instruments are commonly termed hotel sets, because of the fact that their use was first confined largely to the rooms in hotels. Later, however, these instruments have become very popular in general use, particularly in residences. Sometimes the boxes or cabinets of these sets are made of wood, but of recent years the tendency has been growing to make them of pressed steel. The steel box is usually finished in black enamel, baked on, the color being sometimes varied to match the color of the surrounding woodwork. In Figs. 154 and 155 are shown two views of a common-battery hotel set manufactured by the Dean Electric Company.

Such sets are extremely neat in appearance and have the advantage of taking up little room on the wall and the commercial advantage of being light and compact for s.h.i.+pping purposes. A possible disadvantage of this type of instrument is the somewhat crowded condition which necessarily follows from the placing of all the parts in so confined a s.p.a.ce. This interferes somewhat with the accessibility of the various parts, but great ingenuity has been manifested in making the parts readily get-at-able in case of necessity for repairs or alterations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 154. Steel Box Hotel]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 155. Steel Box Hotel Set]

_Desk_. The common-battery desk telephone presents a somewhat simpler problem than the magneto desk telephone for the reason that the generator and local battery, the two most bulky parts of a magneto telephone, do not have to be provided for. Some companies, in manufacturing desk stands for common-battery purposes, mount the condenser and the induction coil or impedance coil, or whatever device is used in connection with the talking circuit, in the base of the desk stand itself, and mount the polarized ringer and the condenser used for ringing purposes in a separate bell box adapted to be mounted on the wall or some portion of the desk. Other companies mount only the transmitter, receiver, and hook switch on the desk stand proper and put the condenser or induction coil, or other device a.s.sociated with the talking circuit, in the bell box. There is little to choose between the two general practices. The number of conducting strands in the flexible cord is somewhat dependent on the arrangement of the circuit employed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 156. Common-Battery Desk Set]