Giving the hand crank a spin on these phones spun a magneto which sent a pulse down the line to the operators switchboard and alerted her to the incoming call. That grey box in the center may be the magneto, but I don't know what the drycell batteries are for.
2 comments:
As I understand, and I could be wrong:
Old telephones had 4 wires attached to them. 2 were only used for ringing, and the other 2 carried the voice modulations. Turning the crank turned a magneto which generated the rings. The voice was on a separate electric circuit, and relied on a "battery" of electric cells connected together in the bottom of the telephone case. This one uses "dry cells", but the early ones used "wet cells" - glass jars filled with sulfuric acid.
If you were on a party line, different people had a different code of rings. If you knew their code and and wanted to call them, you would crank the magneto in their code and you didn't need to use the operator. If you wanted someone not on your party line, you would have to ring the operator's code, and she would transfer your call to a different circuit.
Jack from Illinois
P.S. Filled with "electrolyte", not necessarily sulfuric acid.
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