How does it work?

[J. Forster]

Interesting.

My family had a country house in upstate NY and it had a party line with magneto
ringing ( 24 ring 5). During a T-storm the line often rang. One time I saw a
big, fat spark jump from the 'phone box to a hot air vent about 6 FEET away.
That's why you don't wanna use the phone in a storm. The house was on a sand
dune...  lots of nice, insulating quartz below. Hard to get a good ground.

-John

jackiv at juno.com wrote:

> WELL-- small "ring down" magneto boards used 6v or to be precise, three
> lead acid cells. This was for the local talk battery.
> My grandad and his brother owned a little 30 line single wire and ground
> thing in ne nebraska, i had to clean contacts, water the battery clean the
> plugs
> (jacks) and general maint. around the place.  The operator had to crank a
> magneto to
> ring the subscriber-- till they bought a 20 cycle ringing generator. That was
> by
> Kellog sw bd and supply. (you did not want to be at the board during a
> lightnin'
> storm either.......)
>         jack
>
> On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 11:34:38 -0400 "J. Forster" <jfor at quik.com> writes:
> > Bingo. I've never seen one before. IMO, this is not for telephones
> > since it's 6  VDC output. More likely it's for car batteries.
> > -J

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