176 Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe 



Government engineers declined to have anything to do with micro- 

 phonic transmitters, arid until 1888 insisted upon supplying their 

 subscribers with nothing but a push-button and battery, a trembling 

 bell, and two receivers, one to speak to, the other to listen by, in 

 spite of the fact that all the lines were single and subject to in- 

 inductive disturbances. These receivers were both attached by 

 long cords, so that a subscriber had to hold one to his ear and the 

 other before his face, somewhat in the attitude of mermaid and 

 looking-glass. With both hands so engaged, the taking of notes or 

 holding of papers was of course impracticable. When at last, in 

 1888, they were compelled by public clamour to provide micro- 

 phones, the type chosen was a kind of Crossley mounted vertically, 

 and known as the Mix & Genest transmitter. Magneto ringers 

 they would not have at any price until last year, when Berlin 

 and Hamburg were provided with them, all the rest of the Imperial 

 towns being still worked with batteries and pushes. In Berlin 

 and Hamburg the old battery instruments have to a large extent 

 been converted to magnetos at an expense said to amount to 65 

 marks (shillings) per instrument exceeding the cost at which new 

 magneto instruments of really efficient design could have been pur- 

 chased. The Imperial Post Office still adheres to single wires with 

 earth return, and has not expressed, or given evidence of the 

 latest multiple boards being made for single wires any inten- 

 tion of an ultimate conversion to double, although the speak- 

 ing over the trunk lines, as between subscriber and subscriber, at 

 least, is already far from satisfactory. The enormous expense 

 of such a change is assigned as a reason, but it is an inade- 

 quate and ludicrous one in face of the facts that the General 

 Telephone Company of Stockholm has actually converted its 

 system within the last two years, and that its example is being 

 followed by other companies and by several Governments. At 

 least, new exchanges might be run with metallic circuits, and 

 the area over which the inevitable change will have to be made 

 thereby limited. As it is, subscribers are crowding on in all 

 parts of Germany, and the public money is being spent in 

 connecting them in a manner which is already recognised 

 nearly everywhere else even in Servia, Bulgaria, and Roumania 

 as obsolete. In a few years more the machine will have 



