Cyclopedia of Telephony and Telegraphy, Vol. 1 / A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc.

by American School of Correspondence

Principles. An idea of the general features of the step-by-step systems may be had by conceiving at each station on the line a ratchet wheel, having a pawl adapted to drive it one step at a time, this pawl being associated with the armature of an electromagnet which receives current impulses from the line circuit. There is thus one of these driving magnets at each station, each bridged across the line so that when a single impulse of current is sent out from the central office all of the ratchet wheels will be moved one step. Another impulse will move all of the ratchet wheels another step, and so on throughout any desired number of impulses. The ratchet wheels, therefore, are all stepped in unison.

Let us further conceive that all of these ratchet wheels are provided with a notch or a hole or a projection, alike in all respects at all stations save in the position which this notch or hole or projection occupies on the wheel. The thing to get clear in this part of the conception is that all of these notches, holes, or projections are alike on all of the wheels, but they occupy a different position on the wheel for each one of the stations.

Consider further that the bell circuit at each of the stations is normally open, but that in each case it is adapted to be closed when the notch, hole, or projection is brought to a certain point by the revolution of the wheel.

Let us conceive further that this distinguishing notch, hole, or projection is so arranged on the wheel of the first station as to close the bell circuit when one impulse has been sent, that that on the second station will close the bell circuit after the second impulse has been sent, and so on throughout the entire number of stations. It will, therefore, be apparent that the bell circuits at the various stations will, as the wheels are rotated in unison, be closed one after the other. In order to call a given station, therefore, it is only necessary to rotate all of the wheels in unison, by sending out the proper stepping impulses until they all occupy such a position that the one at the desired station is in such position as to close the bell circuit at that station. Since all of the notches, holes, or projections are arranged to close the bell circuits at their respective stations at different times, it follows that when the bell circuit at the desired station is closed those at all of the other stations will be open. If, therefore, after the proper number of stepping impulses has been sent to the line to close the bell circuit of the desired station, ringing current be applied to the line, it is obvious that the bell of that one station will be rung to the exclusion of all others. It is, of course, necessary that provision be made whereby the magnets which furnish the energy for stepping the wheels will not be energized by the ringing current. This is accomplished in one of several ways, the most common of which is to have the stepping magnets polarized or biased in one direction and the bells at the various stations oppositely biased, so that the ringing current will not affect the stepping magnet and the stepping current will not affect the ringer magnets.

After a conversation is finished, the line may be restored to its normal position in one of several ways. Usually so-called release magnets are employed, for operating on the releasing device at each station. These, when energized, will withdraw the holding pawls from the ratchets and allow them all to return to their normal positions. Sometimes these release magnets are operated by a long impulse of current, being made too sluggish in their action to respond to the quick-stepping impulses; sometimes the release magnets are tapped from one limb of the line to ground, so as not to be affected by the stepping or ringing currents sent over the metallic circuit; and sometimes other expedients are used for obtaining the release of the ratchets at the proper time, a large amount of ingenuity having been spent to this end.

As practically all step-by-step party-line systems in commercial use have also certain other features intended to assure privacy of conversation to the users, and, therefore, come under the general heading of lock-out party-line systems, the discussion of commercial examples of these systems will be left for the next chapter, which is devoted to such lock-out systems.

Broken-Line Method. The broken-line system, like the step-by-step system, is also essentially a lock-out system and for that reason only its general features, by which the selective ringing is accomplished, will be dealt with here.

Principles. In this system there are no tuned bells, no positively and negatively polarized bells bridged to ground on each side of the line, and no step-by-step devices in the ordinary sense, by which selective signaling has ordinarily been accomplished on party lines. Instead of this, each instrument on the line is exclusively brought into operative relation with the line, and then removed from such operative relation until the subscriber wanted is connected, at which time all of the other instruments are locked out and the line is not encumbered by any bridge circuits at any of the instruments that are not engaged in the conversation. Furthermore, in the selecting of a subscriber or the ringing of his bell there is no splitting up of current among the magnets at the various stations as in ordinary practice, but the operating current goes straight to the station desired and to that station alone where its entire strength is available for performing its proper work.

In order to make the system clear it may be stated at the outset that one side of the metallic circuit line is continued as in ordinary practice, passing through all of the stations as a continuous conductor. The other side of the line, however, is divided into sections, its continuity being broken at each of the subscriber's stations. Fig. 186 is intended to show in the simplest possible way how the circuit of the line may be extended from station to station in such manner that only the ringer of one station is in circuit at a time. The two sides of the line are shown in this figure, and it will be seen that limb L extends from the central office on the left to the last station on the right without a break. The limb R, however, extends to the first station, at which point it is cut off from the extension R_x by the open contacts of a switch. For the purpose of simplicity this switch is shown as an ordinary hand switch, but as a matter of fact it is a part of a relay, the operating coil of which is shown at 6, just above it, in series with the ringer.