THE NEW TELEPHONE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13915, 28 May 1909, Page 7

THE NEW TELEPHONE.

A GLANCE AT THE FITTINGSI INCREASED FEE DEMANDED; ;j3 The new telephone system is approaching completion, and will soon be brought into use, with all its improvements upon the present system. It will have one important drawback, that unless the service is kept going all night and on Sundays, the special connections that are now niacin permanent while the exchange :s closed — the hospital, the medical men,. a.nd the lire' brigades' station--will oe cut ofi' for the eight ohurs from midnight to 8 a.m. This matter was men turned seme time ago, and the Borough Council issued a circular to subscribers, as-1 ing them to state whether they were illing to pay the extra charge of £"1 per connection demanded by the Department for a continuous service. Only 78 out of the 300 odd sent favourable replies. The near approach of rhe opening has led the Council to ask for a fresh vote on the subject by circular. .'J his quotes" the last Departmental lei ter of April Ist, which offers two altern;i~.iws. The Department will arrange lor continuous attendance for "an annual subscription of £7 for each business connection, and £0 for each private residence; or, as an alternative, £6 for each connection of either kind. In view of the fact that the present ail night connections will otherwise he cut ■off, and in view of the benelits subscribers would derive from a ..witinuous service, the Borough Council asks for support for this service. ; A ••Herald" representative was shown through -the central installation yesterday by Mr Shrimpton, who is in charge of the work, with the idea of giving a description of it; but lie confesses entire inability to follow the intricacies of the installation sufficiently .well to do so. As a whole it is certainly the mast complex thing in Timaru, and probably this kind of telephone apparatus is the most complex thing in the world. There are iv. o or three rooms-ill the basement, the contents of which are eouiparar.ivoiy simple. There are two gas ci'siinos, one for driving a dynamo if necessary, should the town supply of electric luive not be available, otherwise an -.lectnc motor will do the work; the oilier driving an air compressor. The dynamo is used for charging storage cells, • which are placed in a giasswalled room for the exclusion oi' <'ust. Yesterday the coupled motor and dynamo were faintly humming, transposing the high voltage arriving from the power house by a thin cable, into a weaker but larger current carried by a thicker wire to a row of storage cells, the water in which was seething with the uprising of bubbles of the two gases iuto which molecules of water had been decomposed by the electric ; ction. The air-compressor has an important ditty. It- compresses air to a considerable forces it through four stout cylinders containing chloride of efllcium for the purpose of drying ilie air. and this is then forced through the cables ful of wires, in order to keep the insulating paper dry, as moisture would injure or destroy the insulation. It is in the upper floor, in the instrument room and- the exchange, v. hero the bewildering complexity is seen. In the former there are several erections which are perfect mazes of fine worsted wrapped wires, connected with tiny brass strips, little bits of vulcanite, little bits of porcelain, little bits of rubber, all arranged in neatlooking series, and one needs to look into them to appreciate the numbers of tiny soldered joints that- had to be made, and of screws that had to be driven, to get the whole thing assembled." The new exchange room on the working side is a most presentable place, with its very neat upright •' boardof numbered plug-holes for connections, each with u tiny glow lamp beside it to attract the clerk's attentiou to a "call." The present working board is hard by, and there is a great contrast between the two. The three clerks now have a little spider web of insulated plug-ended connecting wires in view, and a clattering r.rray of metal shutters, one of which drops at calls and is restored with a click. In the new board the glow lamp replaces the shutter, and does several other things besides intimating a call. The connecting tubes s,re all hidden, slinking out of sight iy a space below, as they are put out of use. While this working board is in front, a very neat piece of furniture in |H»lishcu wood, the rear of it is a hope-less-looking tangle of worsted threads, each hiding a thin copper wire, and a second board, both wide and high, supports a marvellous network of such strings. The uninitiated can only wonder how the assemblers managed to get the multitudinous junctions and in tor lacings properly made. Possibly there have been some mistakes made in the work, but the arrangement has been so well thought out that .unnecessary corrections (all be made ',uite simply—not at this point, but- somewhere else. 1 The user of the new telephone will be delighted -with it. There is no tronblsome ringing-011 or ringing-off; this is done by the machinery in the central office. There will be no annoyance caused by " cut ting-off " in the middle of a conversation, for until

both receivers are hung up the clerk by the glow of the connected lamp that the instruments are still in use. And most important of all, the double wire ensures privacy ' and comfort. Nothing is heard but the sounds entering the sender at the' other end of the wire. Our representative a connection, and the tone was ss perfect as if the speakers bad been, face to face.