IMPROVED TELEPHONIC EXCHANGE SYSTEM, AND APPARATUS EMPLOYED FOR EFFECTING TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Ernest de Pass at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 30th December 1879. A communication
from abroad by the Law Telegraph Company, of New York, in the United
States of America.
ERNEST DE PASS, of the Office for British & Foreign Patents, 68, Fleet Street,
in the City of London, Patent Agent. "IMPROVED TELEPHONIC EXCHANGE SYSTEM,
AND APPARATUS EMPLOYED FOR EFFECTING TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION." A
communication from abroad by the Law Telegraph Company, of New York, in the
United States of America.
The object of this Invention is to enable any one of a large number of subscribers
to what is commonly known as a telephone intercommunication, exchange, district,
or central office system, to be quickly, easily, and without confusion, put in private
and direct communication at any time with any other subscriber, either of the
same central office, or of any one of a series of central offices.
I overcome the objections to the present system by employing two wires and
circuits, one for connection or disconnection calls or signals and the other for private
communication between subscribers, constructed and operated in the manner herein
after set forth; and also by using a call or signal wire between two or more
central stations, with a listening or receiving operator at each end of the same, and
also wires to be used as private wires between the same, constructed, combined,
and operated in the manner hereinafter set forth.
From each subscriber's station two wires are run to a common central office, one
of which wires I preferably run to no other station or stations, although several
stations may be located thereon, and the other wire I run to as many other sub-
scribers' stations as the amount of business done by them warrants. The first is
the private, and the latter is the call or signal wire. These wires are provided
with a battery or other source of electricity, and with a suitable switchboard and
instruments at the common central office, and suitable instruments and batteries or
other source of electricity at all the stations. Then any one subscriber can, at any
time, obtain private and direct telephonic communication with any other subscriber
by requesting the common contral office by means of the last mentioned call or
signal wire to connect together the private wires of the two subscriber stations,
and afterwards having finished their communications can signal in like manner the
common central station to disconnect said private lines, so that either may be in

page_text: readiness to be connected at any moment with the private line of any other
station.
I also overcome the objections previously referred to without employing two
wires and circuits, and in the system or systems where the subscribers' stations are
connected with the central office or station by a single wire by adding the following
appliances and arrangements to the old :-First. By connecting the table sections
by means of a common circuit, which I call the office circuit, with a pair of tele-
phones located near the switchboard, and near the positions of the switchboard
operators in front of the same. Second. By providing in each table room or section
switches arranged so as to enable the table operators to transfer their pairs of 1
telephones from the switch-board circuits and connect them with the office circuit
at will. Thus the table operators can communicate either with any subscriber or
with the listening operator through the same pair of telephones, switching them
from one line to the other, and thereby diminishing the liability to confusion and
misunderstanding which might arise if the instruments were permanently connected 1
into the circuits, and thereby placed to some extent out of the control of the
operator in the room. Third. By isolating the table-operators from each other, and
from the main or switchboard room and operators there, placing them apart, pre-
ferably in separate rooms, so that they may not overhear or confuse each other, and
the switch-board operators in giving orders for connections and disconnections.
And, Fourth. By placing a listening operator at the end of the office circuit in front
of the switch-board, which is connected with a pair of telephones for his use.