Williams telegraph repeater
date: label: date made
content: ca 1878
name: label: maker
content: Charles Williams, Jr.
label: maker
content: Farmer, Moses G.
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Telegraph repeaters amplified electrical signals in a telegraph line. Telegraph messages traveled as a series of electrical pulses through a wire from a transmitter to a receiver. Short pulses made a dot, slightly longer pulses a dash. The pulses faded in strength as they traveled through the wire, limiting the distance a message could travel. Repeaters remedied that problem by detecting a weak signal and using a local power source to re-energize and re-transmit the signal down the line.
label: Description (Brief)
content: This repeater was made by Charles Williams, Jr. of Boston and used in experiments by Moses Farmer. Williams was a well known instrument maker who also made early telephone devices for Alexander Graham Bell. Someone, Farmer himself perhaps, removed the electromagnet coils from this repeater prior to the donation of the relay by his daughter in 1899.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Electricity
label: See more items in
content: Communications
label: See more items in
content: Telegraph Relays & Repeaters
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: from Sarah J. Farmer
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: EM.181953
label: catalog number
content: 181953
label: accession number
content: 2015.0173
objectType: label: Object Name
content: expreimental repeater
label: Object Name
content: telegraph repeater
label: Object Name
content: telegraph relay
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: brass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 3/4 in x 10 1/4 in x 7 in; 12.065 cm x 26.035 cm x 17.78 cm