The Telephone

Abstract

THIS book is one of the “Specialists' Series” of technical manuals now being issued by Messrs. Whittaker and Co. Its aim is to give as full an account as possible of telephony as a practical art, and the authors have certainly succeeded in inclosing within the compass of a handy octavo volume a vast amount of well-arranged information on a subject hitherto unrepresented in English by any systematic treatise. After two chapters, comprising about twenty pages, on sound and speech, and on such parts of electrical theory as are more immediately connected with the action of the telephone, the authors proceed to deal with the construction of the telephone, and treat in detail the subject of transmitters and receivers of all kinds. This part of the book is very interesting, giving as it does an account of the principal forms of telephone receivers and transmitters which were the outcome of the marvellous activity of telephonic research aroused by the publication of the inventions of Bell, Edison, and Hughes. In chapter x. come telephone lines and cables, and modes of installing them; then chapters on auxiliary apparatus, and on terminal and intermediate stations, lead up to the important subject of telephone exchanges, and appliances connected with their working, to which chapters xiv. to xx. are devoted. Long-distance telephony is introduced in chapter xxi., and systems of translation between the terminal networks, and the return wire or other induction avoiding circuit between the-two places, are fully described. Various problems of practical telephony are then discussed, such as multiplex telephony, and the numerous devices for enabling several subscribers to work in one circuit. Chapters on the telephone as applied to the telegraph service, its military uses in camp and in the field, and finally some miscellaneous although important scientific applications of the instrument, conclude the work.

The Telephone.

By William Henry Preece Julius Maier. (Pp. i–xvi., and 1–498. (London: Whittaker and Co., 1889.)