TELEPHONE REPAIR WORK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22392, 13 April 1936, Page 6

TELEPHONE REPAIR WORK

LARGE STAFF ENGAGED AN ( INGENIOUS MACHINE To maintain New Zealand's telephone service at the most efficient leveL a large staff has to be employed on the lines and in the exchanges. Behind this field force conies the Post and Telegraph workshops organisation, always busy with repairs as well as the building of new equipment. Electrical apparatus is being continuously attacked by natural forces and the insidious encroachment of ultimate eleotrolytical action. Magnetic and electric storms, phtv nomena with the public is acquainted through their effect on wireless sets, are liable to damage the delicate apparatus used for telegraph and telephone business, which cannot be carried on without the use of scores of thousands, of coils of many forms. The telephone bells in a subscriber's home depend for thpir operation on the efficiency of two coils, which have to be systematically watched for breakdown. Hundreds of these coils have to be replaced every month, and the damaged coils are sent to the department's workshops in Wellington for rewinding. The average bell coil consists of 10,000 turns of insulated copper wire of the remarkably small diameter of one 6000 th of an inch, and the complete coil contains 575 yards.-' To wind such a coil a cleverly designed instrument manufactured in England is used by the department. It can be set to wind the - 10.000 turns exactly in the space afforded by the limits of the coil, and. when the final turn is completed, it will stop. The instrument may be adjusted to deal with a very large variety of coils needed in the telephone and telegraph service, and it gets through an enormous amount of work 'because it function! efficiently at 3000 revolutions a minutfl.