1 62 Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe 



were greatly exercised as to the respective merits of the Ader r 

 Maiche, Pasquet, Journaux, Dejongh, Crossley, Breguet, Roulez r 

 Ochorowicz, Bert, D'Arsonval, Mors-Abdank, Milde, Runnings, 

 and twenty others, each of which was represented as the only one 

 worthy of attention. The State has the fixing and maintaining 

 of the instruments, although the subscribers buy them, and, after 

 a long time, began to recognise the fact that it had a vast number 

 of cheap and defective instruments on its hands to maintain, and 

 that the operation threatened to become a serious one in respect 

 to cost. So, in 1893, the State issued a specification, intended to- 

 secure good workmanship, to be observed by all makers, under 

 pain of having their instruments rejected ; and subscribers were 

 required at the same time to submit the instruments they bought 

 to the telephone authorities to be tested and passed prior to fitting. 

 These regulations have brought about a great improvement in 

 quality, but a vast mass of the older material remains in use, while 

 the diversities of type have not been lessened. The instrument 

 fitters and inspectors have consequently to be familiar with the 

 mechanism and connections of some forty different kinds of appa- 

 ratus, many of widely diverging patterns. This must lead to delay 

 in removing faults. The hope of the French Government that 

 competition between makers would in time develop an instrument 

 of exceptional merit has scarcely, so far, been realised, since the 

 best transmitters, if not receivers, have originated outside France. 

 Space will not permit of the diversities of design being particularly 

 referred to here, and it must suffice to say that while the battery 

 ringer is universal, and the Ader receiver continues to occupy the 

 position of first favourite, which it won in the days of the Societe 

 Generate, the latest tendency in transmitters is towards one or 

 other form of Runnings. The French instruments now supplied 

 are, as a rule, both well made and tasteful in design and decora- 

 tion. An ingenious instrument which, although at present em- 

 ployed almost exclusively for private lines, may become more 

 familiar in exchange work later on, when the time for the inevitable 

 change from batteries to magnetos arrives, is the magneto-electric 

 call of M. Roulez, shown in figs. 45 and 46. The soft-iron 

 cores c l c 2 of the electro-magnets E 1 E 2 are clamped between 

 the poles of the same name of the powerful permanent magnets 



