[CHAPTER VIII]
MAGNETO SIGNALING APPARATUS
Method of Signaling. The ordinary apparatus, by which speech is received telephonically, is not capable of making sufficiently loud sounds to attract the attention of people at a distance from the instrument. For this reason it is necessary to employ auxiliary apparatus for the purpose of signaling between stations. In central offices where an attendant is always on hand, the sense of sight is usually appealed to by the use of signals which give a visual indication, but in the case of telephone instruments for use by the public, the sense of hearing is appealed to by employing an audible rather than a visual signal.
Battery Bell. The ordinary vibrating or battery bell, such as is employed for door bells, is sometimes, though not often, employed in telephony. It derives its current from primary batteries or from any direct-current source. The reason why they are not employed to a greater extent in telephony is that telephone signals usually have to be sent over lines of considerable length and the voltage that would be required to furnish current to operate such bells over such lengths of line is higher than would ordinarily be found in the batteries commonly employed in telephone work. Besides this the make-and-break contacts on which the, ordinary battery bell depends for its operation are an objectionable feature from the standpoint of maintenance.
Magneto Bell. Fortunately, however, there has been developed a simpler type of electric bell, which operates on smaller currents, and which requires no make-and-break contacts whatever. This simpler form of bell is commonly known as the polarized, or magneto, bell or ringer. It requires for its operation, in its ordinary form, an alternating current, though in its modified forms it may be used with pulsating currents, that is, with periodically recurring impulses of current always in the same direction.
Magneto Generator. In the early days of telephony there was nearly always associated with each polarized bell a magneto generator for furnishing the proper kind of current to ring such bells. Each telephone was therefore equipped, in addition to the transmitter and receiver, with a signal-receiving device in the form of a polarized bell, and with a current generator by which the user was enabled to develop his own currents of suitable kind and voltage for ringing the bells of other stations.
Considering the signaling apparatus of the telephones alone, therefore, each telephone was equipped with a power plant for generating currents used by that station in signaling other stations, the prime mover being the muscles of the user applied to the turning of a crank on the side of the instrument; and also with a current-consuming device in the form of a polarized electromagnetic bell adapted to receive the currents generated at other stations and to convert a portion of their energy into audible signals.
The magneto generator is about the simplest type of dynamo-electric machine, and it depends upon the same principles of operation as the much larger generators, employed in electric-lighting and street-railway power plants, for instance. Instead of developing the necessary magnetic field by means of electromagnets, as in the case of the ordinary dynamo, the field of the magneto generator is developed by permanent magnets, usually of the horseshoe form. Hence the name magneto.