Electromechanics - History of Electromechances

History of Electromechances

Relays originated with telegraphy as electromechanical devices used to regenerate telegraph signals.

The Strowger switch, Panel switch and similar ones were widely used in early automated telephone exchanges. Crossbar switches were first widely installed in the middle 20th century in Sweden, the United States and Britain, and quickly spread to the rest of the world. The electromechanical television systems of the late 19th century were less successful.

Electric typewriters developed, up to the 1980s, as "power-assisted typewriters". They contained a single electrical component, the motor. Where the keystroke had previously moved a typebar directly, now it engaged mechanical linkages that directed mechanical power from the motor into the typebar. This was also true of the later IBM Selectric. At Bell Labs, in the 1940s, the Bell Model V computer was developed. It was an electromechanical relay-based device; cycles took seconds. In 1968 electromechanical systems were still under serious consideration for an aircraft flight control computer, until a device based on large scale integration electronics was adopted in the Central Air Data Computer.