Description: EXCEEDINGLY RARE: The Simplex Interior Telephone Co. offered intercommunicating equipment, Patented Feb 25, 1896 Included: 2 complete 1896 "Simplex Interior Telephones" with speaking tubes and hand-held listening devices. Original wires and circuit breaker. This set is made with hardwood and plastic (for the mouth and ear pieces). The wooden parts are held together with woodscrews and driven into a wall. These are VERY RARE! As in, none could be located on the Internet! "How would you like to simply put out your hand, unhook a small device, and be in instant communication with [someone in your company]? The Metaphone enables you to do this. It is a transmitter and receiver mounted on opposite ends of a small metal handle. It requires only the current necessary to ring an electric bell." The devices could be connected in a network, so that any two could communicate without a central switchboard, or radially, in which case only the central station could communicate with the others. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a telephone at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The first telephones were point-to-point systems, and Yates reports that "early installations of point-to-point telephones often linked the office and factory of a single firm....Beginning in the 1890s, private branch exchanges were widely adopted to link many locations within large facilities." (JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication, 1989, p. 21)
Price: 1299 USD
Location: Kent, Connecticut
End Time: 2024-11-06T15:05:51.000Z
Shipping Cost: N/A USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Brand: Simpex Interior Telephone
Year: 1896
Time Period Manufactured: Pre-1940
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
