Design and Features
Candlestick telephones were designed in a great variety of styles with varying features.
Most recognizable, candlesticks featured a base with a vertical cylindrical neck extending upright for up to 10 inches in length. At the top of the stand was mounted a carbon microphone (transmitter) to speak into, and a switchhook extending sideways upon which an ear piece (receiver) was hung. In order to make or answer a telephone call, the user lifted the receiver off the switchhook, thereby activating an internal switch connecting the telephone to the telephone line.
Candlestick telephones required the nearby installation of a subscriber set (subset, ringer box), which housed the ringer to announce incoming calls and the electric circuitry (capacitor, induction coil, signaling generator, connection terminals) to connect the set to the telephone network.
When automatic telephone exchanges were introduced, the base of a candlestick also featured a rotary dial, used for signaling the telephone number of an intended call recipient.
Read more about this topic: Candlestick Telephone
Famous quotes containing the words design and/or features:
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)