Scanning Our Past from London
Developing the Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell, the subject of last month’s Scan-ning, was not the only person to attempt the transmission of speech by electrical means (Fig. 1). His first successful in-strumenthadanirondiaphragmvibratedbythesoundwaves.The diaphragm was close to an electromagnet and, as it vi-brated, a corresponding current was induced in the coil. Asimilar instrument served as the receiver, and the current inthe coil of the receiver produced a varying magnetic field,which made its diaphragm vibrate in synchronism with thediaphragm of the transmitter.Bell had previously tried an arrangement with a contactpoint mounted on a diaphragm in such a way that a circuitwas made and broken as the diaphragm vibrated. Bell left asketch showing the arrangement, which is shown in Fig. 2.I. E
ARLY
T
ELEPHONE
A
TTEMPTS
The German school teacher Philip Reis had tried a sim-ilar arrangement as a telephone transmitter a few years pre-viously, but he did not have a satisfactory receiver (Fig. 3).Reis’s receiver depended on the magnetic “click” that occursin an iron rod when the current in a surrounding coil is in-terrupted. The iron rod stood on a sounding board to makethe noise audible, but it did not prove to be a practical ar-rangement. Subsequently, both Bell and Elisha Gray exper-imented with transmitters in which a platinum wire on thediaphragm dipped into a conducting liquid. That was a stepforwardinthattheywere
varying
theresistanceincircuit,not just making and breaking the circuit rapidly. In the end, how-ever, the Edison carbon transmitter, in which the pressure of the sound waves was made to vary the pressure between twopieces of carbon, proved much more practical and reliable,and was universally adopted (Fig. 4).II. S
WITCHBOARD
E
VOLUTION
One pair of telephones was not enough, however, and thewhole world of telephone exchanges had to be developedbefore one proud owner of a telephone could call anybodyelse who possessed one. The idea of a central switchroomby which subscribers could be interconnected was suggestedin October 1877 by an enterprising journalist in Boston and
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9219(01)05412-3.
quicklytookpractical shapefollowing theideasalready usedin the telegraph system. At first, a ticket system enabled anoperator to receive requests from individual subscribers for aspecified line between certain times and to issue instructionsby means of the ticket to another operator, who inserted andwithdrew plugs as required.In January 1878, a commercial telephone exchange wasinstalled at New Haven, CT. Drop indicators were used witha call bell and two-way lever switches enabled the operatorto connect his own telephone to any line and obtain instruc-tion. Another switch enabled him to send out a signal in theform of a loud buzzing sound on the subscriber’s receiver. Afew months later, an exchange in which cords were used wasset up in Chicago. The subscribers’ indicators were arrangedalong a wall and a series of horizontal metallic rods groupedin pairs as connecting racks. These had clearing-out drop in-dicators associated with them.In the early 1880s, several businesslike attempts weremade to produce practical switchboards. The Western Unionalready had the key switch for telegraph purposes and theBell Company generally followed this design. One of theirlicensees, Williams, of Boston, made a board with an upperupright section and a lower sloping one with two rows of annunciatorsbetween.Thehorizontalbarswereconnectedtoverticalrowsofspringjacksbehindthepanelbytheinsertionof long plugs. The operator’s set was inserted at a horizontalseriesofspringjacksalongthefrontedgeoftheslopingpanel.In England, a telephone exchange was established by theTelephone Co., Ltd., at 36 Coleman Street, London, in Au-gust 1879. It operated on the Williams principle and had twovertical panels with three rows of drop indicators and threerows of flat spring jacks, one for each subscriber’s indicator.On the upper part of the board were 24 pairs of colored inter-connecting horizontal metal bars provided with holes to takecircular pegs connected to cords for coupling up to selectedsubscribers. In front of the board were two small tables, onefor the answering operator and the other for the calling op-erator. One operator having taken the call, intercepted theline and connected it via the jack cord to the coupling strips;the answering operator passed the details to his colleaguewho then called the wanted subscriber and also walked tothe board to complete the connection. Other exchanges fol-lowed, and soon the number of subscribers was measured inhundreds.
0018–9219/01$10.00 ©2001 IEEE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 7, JULY 2001 1135
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