Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/321

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N the previous chapter it was shown how the primitive telephone set supplied to subscribers by the New Haven and other pioneer exchanges consisted only of a mahogany or rubber magneto hand telephone hung on a steel hook screwed into 'wall or board, and how the use of the circuit-breaking push button was the approved method of calling central. No vibrating bell was supplied to the subscriber. When central called, attention was attracted with the aid of a buzzing, squealing noise, that was sent through the telephone by manually and rapidly operating a large induction coil attached to the switchboard. That was the method in vogue early in 1878, and, as already stated, in the beginning it was the custom to use this one-hand telephone as



transmitter and receiver, dexterously moving it from lips to ear and from ear to lips, as the conversation progressed. From time to time instructions were issued to subscribers on the proper use of the telephone. One of the first read: 'Do not talk with your ear, or listen with your mouth.' Where a subscriber was willing to pay for 'two telephones,' he enjoyed the unusual convenience of following the now common method of holding the receiver to his ear while talking into the transmitter, as shown in Fig. 22. Not many duplicate telephones