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Frederic Allan Gower was an American entrepreneur who,
for a while, operated a Bell franchise in the U.S. state of New England. He
toured and lectured with Bell and Watson before heading off to England in
the early 1880's. Here he completed the design that became the British
Post Office standard for many years.
The unusual style of his phone was due to the technology of the times. Bell’s patents made it necessary to develop alternative designs of
transmitters and receivers. For a receiver, Gower produced a version of the
Watchcase Receiver. It used a fairly powerful semicircular magnet with a
bobbin wound around the end of each pole. This design was not particularly
efficient compared with the Bell receiver, but Gower made it much bigger
than usual and used a very large tinned iron diaphragm. This gave quite
adequate reception but its size (more than four inches across) meant that
the receiver had to be mounted inside the case of the phone. Sound was fed
from here to the ears by long rubber tubes. He patented this part of the
design in December 1880 before he left the United States. This caused some
ill feeling with Bell and Watson, and may have helped to encourage his move
to Europe. Watson was quoted as saying “...he made some small
modifications to Bell’s telephone, called it the “Gower-Bell” telephone and
made a fortune out of this hyphenated atrocity”.
For a transmitter, Gower originally used a Bell-type magnetic instrument. In
Britain he quickly saw the potential of the carbon pencil microphone
described but not patented by Professor Hughes some years earlier. This
conveniently worked around the Bell patents. After trying a number of
variations, Gower settled on an eight-pencil model. The pencils, about one
and three quarters of an inch long, were held in a star pattern by copper
blocks. The multiple pencils stopped the dropout problem experienced when a
single pencil vibrated off its copper contacts. The unit proved stable and
reliable. The assembly was mounted on the back of a flat teak sounding board
roughly nine inches by five inches. This became the transmitter’s
diaphragm.
Because the diaphragm was quite thin, it was sometimes protected by another
sheet of timber mounted above it, with decorative cut-outs to let the sound
in the style of Crossley phones. The cut-out was quickly abandoned, and sound
pressure reached the diaphragm through a porcelain mouthpiece horn. Condensation in the relatively cold horn caused moisture to drip onto the
diaphragm, which caused faults and gave off a bad smell. Other mouthpieces
were tried in ebonite and turned wood, but finally in the late 1890's the
mouthpiece was abandoned. The diaphragm was generally left exposed,
and sometimes decorated with a painted design.
A single trembler bell was provided to signal incoming calls, with the
mechanism concealed inside the box on early models. Only the bell and
clapper protruded from the bottom. On later models the bell was provided
separately. Signalling out was provided by a pushbutton mounted at the top
of the backboard. This gave a rather limited signalling range of a mile or
so. A simple switch hook at each side to hold the speaking tubes and a coil
inside the box were all that was needed to complete the phone. This
basic design stayed unchanged through the life of the phone, during which
some thousands were produced for the British Post Office.
The Gower-Bell telephone (a combination of a Gower receiver and a Gower
transmitter) had first been manufactured by Messrs Scott and Wollaston with
a licence issued to them from The Telephone Company Ltd in 1879. The
Gower-Bell Telephone Company, formed in 1880, ultimately acquired the
licence and supplied the Post Office with 20,000 telephones.
Initially some of the phones were manufactured for the Gower-Bell Telephone Company
by Charles Moseley and Sons in Manchester. In April 1881 Gower-Bell
amalgamated with the United Telephone Company (a union of the London Edison
and Bell companies) and set up a new company, the Consolidated Telephone
Construction and Maintenance Co. Ltd, to produce telephones. It not only
manufactured Bell telephones and equipment for the United Telephone Company,
but made Gower phones for the British Post Office, who in 1882 pronounced
the Gower-Bell as "the best and most reliable telephone in service".
The BPO was in the unfortunate position of not being able to use Bell phones
as they were still under patent, and the BPO was becoming increasingly
hostile to the Bell companies, fearing a loss of revenue from the telegraph
system.
Consolidated also made phones for a new European company,
the Edison Gower-Bell Telephone Company of Europe, Ltd. This new company
held Edison’s and Gower’s telephone patents for Europe, and was responsible
for sales to all European countries outside Britain, France, Turkey and
Greece. Edison’s motivation in this was the same as Bell’s - to expand his
company’s influence to as many countries as possible. Until the
Bell patents expired, Edison needed a phone to sell.
A magneto model is known from 1882 with a tall backboard to accommodate the
magneto generator/bellbox and battery box. This model was sold overseas for
a long time, particularly to Portugal, by the new company. Sales of Gower
phones have been noted to Spain, Portugal, Australia and Japan. In Tasmania,
Australia,
Gower-Bells were used on some of the first private telephone lines in the
colony. Japan’s first telephone services were provided in 1893 with 244
locally-made improved Gower-Bells. These were converted to use Ader
type receivers instead of tubes.
In France, the Societe Generale des Telephones was formed from Societe du
Telephone Edison, the Societe du Telephone Gower, and the Soulerin Company. In Argentina, Compañía de Teléfonos Gower-Bell began operations.
Some of these foreign companies used Ader or Pony Crown receivers where the
Bell patents were not a problem.
The British Post Office refitted their Gower-Bell's with
simpler double-pole Bell receivers instead of the Gower tubes as soon as the
Bell patents expired. The tubes needed a high level of maintenance and the
Bell receivers had better public acceptance. The name “Gower-Bell”
appears to have been only a marketing move by Gower, as this later BPO
conversion was the first time the phone had anything to do with Bell.
By the turn of the century the Gower-Bell had dropped into disuse, replaced
by the more modern and efficient phones using standard Bell and Edison
technology. The handset had been introduced by Ericsson and widely
copied by others, and the Gower-Bell had become a rather clumsy relic of the
past.
Gower was successful enough in the short life of his business that he was
comfortably off and was able to indulge his hobbies. He lost his life
in an attempt to fly a hot air balloon across the English Channel.
By Bob Estreich (with additions)
Bibliography:-
Original article for the ATCS Newsletter, January 1992, Havyatt R.
Further information from:-
Allsop F. C. “Telephones - Their Construction and Fitting:” - London
1894.
Poole J “The Practical Telephone Handbook” - New York 1912.
Moyall A. “Clear Across Australia” - Melbourne 1984.
Herbert T. E. & Proctor W. S. “Telephony Vol 1” - London 1932. |