| Push Button Telephone Dialer 1958 Designed and Constructed by Jerry Designed for use by physically handicapped people, phone numbers can be "dialed" by pressing the white buttons. This device uses relays and solenoids to accomplish "dialing" a phone number. The blue section acknowledges which button is pressed. (I never got around to labeling the buttons.) The yellow section counts the number of pulses required for each button pressed. The red section generates the slow pulses that represent each number pressed. This red section, a four-relay, slow-pulsing-oscillator, took the longest to design -- over 3 years. Permission was obtained from the telephone company to test this Push Button Dialer and it functioned properly although its reliability was lacking. This Dialer won 1st Place in the Alamogordo, NM science fair and earned Jerry a trip to the San Francisco Cow Palace, between his Junior and Senior high school years, to participate in the Engineers of the Future Science Fair. This Push Button Dialer did not place, but six months later Bell Telephone announced their brand new push button tone dialers. |
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