[BC] Phasitron...

[Harold Hallikainen]

From: "Gary Glaenzer" <glaenzer at frontier.com>

>>my God...
>>
>>actually using a pair of copper wires
>>
>>what a novel concept

>Yeah! With a battery, a carbon microphone, and an earphone, all connected in series...You could talk from Boston to Nashua, New Hampshire! If you needed to go further, you could connect the diaphragm of the earphone with the diaphragm of another carbon microphone and have a "repeater," the first truly solid-state amplifier! You could continue this until the noise from the carbon microphones became overwhelming. And then.... the invention of carrier and equalized toll pairs! Now the CO is a tiny building connected to a **twinkle** light-pipe. Soon, it will disappear altogether and be replaced by another Wall Mart. Isn't technology
>wonderful?
>
>Richard B. Johnson

I remember old telephone handsets had a wad of cotton in them in the handle between the earphone and the carbon microphone. If you took this out and did not have good sidetone suppression, the handset would 
oscillate. Carbon microphones are really pretty good!

As to a CO turning into a Walmart, here it almost went the other way. There was a Giant Food market in town near the railroad tracks. It's now a very large equipment building for Level Three or someone like that.

Harold