TELEPHONE COMFORT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19783, 26 April 1934, Page 6

TELEPHONE COMFORT

A NEW LOUD SPEAKER Post Office engineers have invented a telephone which will enable subscribers to sit back in their armchairs and talk, with the instrument five or six feet away, while they are answered by loud-speaker (says the London “Daily Telegraph”). It will be almost as if the two speakers were in the same room—except that there is a “voice-operated” switch which only allows one person to be heard at a time. The new telephone will be marketed, it is expected, in a few months’ time. It will cost possibly about four times as much as the ordinary telephone. An official of the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, where the loud-speaker telephone was evolved, discussed the matter over one of the new instruments. “I am standing a out sft away from the telephone,” he said, when the conversation began. There was a slight echo, and the noise of a lift running could be heard, but the audibility of the voice was not impaired. “I will get further away from the instrument,” said the official, and he moved back, counting “Six feet—seven —eight—nine—ten.” His voice became fainter and the echo increased, but even at ten feet it was possible to conduct conversation. "Our idea is that these telephones are useless unless they can be used in an ordinary office or room, and I think that they meet that requirement. “The whole instrument is about four inches by six inches by four inches, with the loud-speaker one side and the microphone the other. “One difficulty we had to overcome was that of one speaker interrupting the other. Obviously without precautions against this the voice of the interrupter would come through the loud-speaker and he would hear his own voice again as it came through the microphone. “We have incorporated a voice-oper-ated switch which, if you interrupt me as I am talking, automatically cuts my voice out.”