Strowger Switch - Details of The Patent

Details of The Patent

US 447918 consists of:

  1. A device for use by the customer — this creates trains of on-off current pulses corresponding to the digits 1-9, and 0 (which sent 10 pulses). This equipment originally consisted of two telegraph keys engaged by knife switches, and evolved into the rotary dial telephone.
  2. A two motion stepping switch at telephone exchange. A contact arm could be moved up and down in order to select one of ten rows of contacts, and then rotated to select one of ten contacts in that row, a total of 100 choices. The stepping motion was controlled by the current pulses coming from the originating customer's telegraph keys, and later from the rotary dial.

This system was widely used until the advent of the crossbar switch — an electromechanical switch with a matrix of vertical and horizontal bars and simpler motions, that worked more reliably.

Read more about this topic:  Strowger Switch

Famous quotes containing the words details of, details and/or patent:

    Then he told the news media
    the strange details of his death
    and they hammered him up in the marketplace
    and sold him and sold him and sold him.
    My death the same.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    Then he told the news media
    the strange details of his death
    and they hammered him up in the marketplace
    and sold him and sold him and sold him.
    My death the same.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    The cigar-box which the European calls a “lift” needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the man’s patent purge—it works
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)