1 88 Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe 



Germany is less autocratic than Republican France. Certainly 

 the possession of most of the railways gives the State a great pull 

 in way-leave facilities over an English telephone company, but 

 that is a matter apart from streets and private houses. 



SWITCHING ARRANGEMENTS 



The multiple switch-boards in use are of three types, manu- 

 factured respectively by the Western Electric Company, Mix : 

 Genest, and R. Stock & Co. The former company has supplied 

 single-cord boards of a total capacity of 24,200 lines to six of the 

 Berlin switch-rooms, and a single-cord board for 5,400 lines to 

 Hamburg. Double-cord boards have been supplied to Frankfort - 

 on-Main (2,800 lines), Cologne (2, 200 lines), Breslau (2,000 lines), 

 and Mannheim (1,000 lines). 



Messrs. Mix & Genest, of Berlin, have supplied their type of 

 board to Hamburg (2,800 lines), Stettin (2,000 lines), Diisseldorf 

 (1,600 lines), Crefeld (1,200 lines), Barmen (1,200 lines), Cassel 

 (1,000 lines), Dortmund (600 lines), and Bochum (600 lines). 



Messrs. R. Stock & Co., of Berlin, have supplied boards to 

 Berlin Moabit (6,000 lines), Dresden (5,000 lines), Leipzig 

 (3,200 lines), Altona (2,000 lines), and Hanover (2,000 lines). 

 Messrs. Stock have also supplied two single- cord boards, each of 

 2,000 lines, to Hamburg, and have extended the Western Electric 

 board at Frankfort-on-Main to 6,000 lines. Experimentally, a 

 flat board has been fitted up at Berlin Moabit by the same firm. 



The Western Electric boards are of that company's well-known 

 type, and call for no special mention. 



The original form of Messrs. Mix & Genest's multiple, 

 which was designed by Mr. D. Oesterreich, has also been often 

 described and illustrated. Its principal feature was the saving of 

 the usual test wires by causing a voltaic current, too weak to 

 actuate the call bells, to flow from a central battery at the ex- 

 change continuously over all the subscribers' lines to earth. The 

 jacks being in series, it was discovered whether a wire asked for 

 was engaged or not by inserting a double-contact plug in one of 

 the jacks. A sensitive galvanometer was looped in the test cord, 

 and, if the wire was free, revealed the test current circulating ; if, 



