The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-11-27

New York. November 2s, 1s04.- Few of the millions of Americans who daily use the telephone stop to think where the familiar appliance comes from or how 1t is made. yet the nanrl- lecture of telephones has become q great Industry and one involving many delicate and wonderful processea. So great is the number of telephones needed to meet the ever increasing de- rnand of a nation of telephone users that In a single factory, the New York establishment of the Western Electric company. as many as 5000 instruments are turned out in day to be distribut- ed among the companies of the Bell system.
 How complicated in reality is the seemingly simple telephone is shown by an examination of a single portion of the instrument. Take. for example, the transmitter. close to which you place your lips when you talk over the wire. It is composed of brass. vulcan ised rubber. steel, aluminium. paper and carbon. and comprises 150 pieces. When transmitters are made at the rate of several thousand q. day, as in this New York factory. 1t requires the ser- vices of eighty persons merely to as- semble the parts Some of these parts are of delicacy of construction far ex- ceeding that necessary in the making of the finest watch which ever licked in the pocket of a telephone user and they are constructed with a mathemat- cal accuracy greater than that enn- ployed in grinding the glass which enable him to read the names in the telephone directory. Telephone mak- CTS are fashioning apparatus to be op- erated with the assistance of the most delicate electrical impulses known to the engineer, The current which will carry the tones of the voice one mile or one thousand Is so minute that its passage through instruments and ap- paratus must be made as easy and free from Interference by other currents as science and skill permit
 The rows of young men in the fac~ tory. busily engaged In putting trans- mltters together, are handling parts which seen by themselves make itseasy. to understand how the words of a per- son at a telephone are sent. flying over the wire. When you speak in q tele- phone transmitter, the sound waves set in motion by your voice cause vib- rations of the diaphragm which may be seen behind the screen placed over it for the purposes of protection. In the centre of the diaphragm Is what appears to be little brass button. Ia reality 1t is one end of a small cylin- der lined with paper and filled with powdered carbon, hardly more of 1t in quantity than the proverbial pinch of salt. When the receiver is taken from its hook, the telephone current flows through the carbon in the cylinder. As the diaphragm vibrates, the bit of brass moves back and forth increasing and dimiuishing the pressure upon the carbon. The particles of the powder thus pushed about alter their resist ence to the electrical current and the fluctuations set up in the current it. self are the means by which sound is transmitted. The little pinch of pow der In the tiny brass receptacle plays 50 important q part in the apparatus that 1t Is measured with the utmost e2actness, There can be no guessing in work as delicate as this, for a few grains too much or too little means an imperfect instrument. The same care is bestowed upon all parts of the me- chanism- It is necessary to prevent the outer face of the brass button be- coming a conductor and so it is fitted with a mica disk which must be made with equal exactness ss variation of two ten-thousandths of an inch from the standard thickness is defect which condemns the instrument.
 While in one portion of the great factory, transmitters are made by the thousand, elsewhere receivers are turned out in equal numbers. The rec ceiver. in it's ordinary form, is familiar as hard rubber cylinder, with one end darIng outward and surrounding small opening back of which is diph- ragm. Tn that rubber case, there Is no magical black powder but there is ap- paratus so delicate that it will trans form the minute telephone wave, which may have travelled a thousand miles, into exact reproductions of the sounds caught by the transmitter and sent on their long Journey. The central feature of the receiver Is in the shape of that emblem of good luck, the horse shoe. It is, in fact, horse-shoe mag net around the poles of which are wound many coils of fine wire. Through this wire flows the current and as 1t fiuctuates because that pinch of powder in the distant transmitter is varying its resistance, the changing