Siemens & Halske ZBSA11

[dsk]

This was one of the very first rotary telephones used in Norway.  The Skien exchange  became (due to happenings other places) the very first city with an automatic exchange in Norway (actually in Scandinavia), ordered from Siemens & Halske in 1916, but started up the night to April 2. 1920 with 1800 of these telephones. Some of these was in service until the 1980-ies.

Here in Norway the city of Bergen should have been the first, but the Western electric exchange was ruined in a great city fire, Oslo should have been the next, also with a Western Electric exchange, but due to the WWii it was delayed, on of the ships with frames and cables was torpedoed. Both Bergen and Oslo should have had reverse dials but only Oslo got that.

[dsk]

A real soap: June 16 2019 it popped up an ad with a ZBSA11 for $175, and Jack Ryan did pretty fast ask me to try to get it.

I traveled to meet the seller I had to promise to have it in my collection, and say it should be in my living-room, but I got it. Then felt I had to offer Jack to get mine that I had in the living-room as a working phone.

Now it is in the mail, and he gets a phone not that nice looking, but in working order. I have the "new one" and it was missing capacitor. (The one I sent had a replacement from the 20'ies) So Now mine has a brand new capacitor, tuned dial and an replacement transmitter. (The one I sent has an original working transmitter) both of them works actually pretty well. A little faint sound in the receiver, but it is designed in 1911 with the original parts. I had to make 2 paper rings to increase the distance between the coils and the diaphragm so it was not touching each other, that made the sound better. The Huge pre is that this phone has a known history, It was originally used on a farm "Grini in Skien" and it has been in the Stalsberg family until I got it.

dsk

[dsk]

The text was so small, but here it OK I hope.
A real soap: June 16 2019 it popped up an ad with a ZBSA11 for $175, and Jack Ryan did pretty fast ask me to try to get it.
I traveled to meet the seller I had to promise to have it in my collection, and say it should be in my living-room, but I got it. Then felt I had to offer Jack to get mine that I had in the living-room as a working phone.
Now it is in the mail, and he gets a phone not that nice looking, but in working order. I have the "new one" and it was missing capacitor. (The one I sent had a replacement from the 20'ies) So Now mine has a brand new capacitor, tuned dial and an replacement transmitter. (The one I sent has an original working transmitter) both of them works actually pretty well. A little faint sound in the receiver, but it is designed in 1911 with the original parts. I had to make 2 paper rings to increase the distance between the coils and the diaphragm so it was not touching each other, that made the sound better. The Huge pre is that this phone has a known history, It was originally used on a farm "Grini in Skien" and it has been in the Stalsberg family until I got it.
dsk

[Doug Rose]

Dag...I love the phones with a Strowger Style Dial. Put me in for the next one you find  . It doesn't have to work.  . Just a wonderful phone....Doug

[Key2871]

That is a very interesting phone, with great history.
I'm glad someone who can care for it properly now has it and I'm sure it will be well taken care of.
Nice work.

[Jack Ryan]

Here they are together - thanks to Dsk!

(Sorry about the beat on the screen)

Jack

[Jack Ryan]

I hope you guys don't mind me dragging up old stuff but I wanted to add some comments to the old posts.

It is a little different Harry, Strowger has 11 finger holes and it has 10. 

I think there were only two models of Strowger dial that had 11 finger holes – the others had 10 holes.

I have heard that this dial was Strowger dials, but I have also heard that the 11'th hole on the Strowger dials not did give any 11 pulses, just the same as 0.

Yes, the additional hole was labelled "Long Distance" and generated 10 pulses just like the '0' hole. The designers at the time were concerned that the subscribers would be reticent to dial a number that contained a zero for fear of connecting to the operator or incurring long distance charges. The solution was to have a hole for '0' and another for 'long distance' – even though 10 pulses were generated in both cases.

I think the large dial Strowger systems were a 3 wire system. V (vertical, R (rotary) and G (ground) instead of Tip and Ring. Was the German system the same or was the telephone set modified for bridging like modern sets?

That's right, the Strowger dials were designed for the three wire system. When the two wire system was developed, some Strowger dials were converted for two wire operation but the re-designed two wire dial was the Sunburst dial. The first public auto exchange in Germany (and Europe) at Hildesheim in 1908 used "two wire" operation with a newly designed dial except the new German dial still used a large finger wheel. The German "Strowger dial" is actually a modern dial.

I wrote "two wire" above because the dial used two wires and a ground but not like the earlier US Strowger dials. The German dial used the ground wire when dialling – it was a dial off normal signal. A side effect of this was that turning the dial when the handset was on hook had the potential to seize exchange equipment. This was not a problem because there was a mechanical interlock preventing the dial from moving when the handset was on hook. Whether the interlock was provided to prevent this or was already present is the subject of another article.

The ground option remained on later telephones for compatibility with the earlier exchange equipment.

The ZBSA 11 was made for use on 2 wire systems, but they were also compatible with a 3 wire system grounding one wire when dial was out of rest position.  This grounding while dialing function are not seen on diagrams of Siemens phones from 1936 and later.

Yes but as described above, this is not the same three wire system as was used with US Strowger dials.

Regards
Jack

[Jack Ryan]

The Installation at Hildesheim was a bit of a hybrid.

The telephones were local battery and used manual ringing but used dial tone - the first ever.

The caption reads: Circuit for local battery wall phone for automatic exchange (Hildesheim)

From 1910 (Altenburg), common battery was used. From then development was fast, in some areas overtaking US development.

Jack

[dsk]

Early German telephones had a ground wire to the dial too. When the dial was out of rest position one ow the lines were grounded.
I do not know if that was in use on mine, but it is there. So it is on the German war telephones too.
dsk

[Jack Ryan]

Early German telephones had a ground wire to the dial too. When the dial was out of rest position one ow the lines were grounded.

Yes, that is what I was trying to explain here:

I wrote "two wire" above because the dial used two wires and a ground but not like the earlier US Strowger dials. The German dial used the ground wire when dialling – it was a dial off normal signal. A side effect of this was that turning the dial when the handset was on hook had the potential to seize exchange equipment. This was not a problem because there was a mechanical interlock preventing the dial from moving when the handset was on hook. Whether the interlock was provided to prevent this or was already present is the subject of another article.
The ground option remained on later telephones for compatibility with the earlier exchange equipment.


Sorry if I didn't explain it very well.

Telephones that had the option of grounding a line while the dial was off normal usually had the hook switch - dial interlock as well so as not to tie up exchange equipment unnecessarily.

Jack

[countryman]

Here's a nice overview of german wiring diagrams.
The W28 still provided a separate ground contact E at the dial shunt switch (nsa) to work together with the old exchanges, already phasing out by 1928. Later models did not have it any more (E is only for a signal button on a PBX here).
According to the book "100 Jahre Fernsprecher in Deutschland" Hildesheim was chosen for a first experimental automatic exchange because it was a mid-sized town and it's phone system needed major investments anyway by that time. Funny enough, the last german manual exchange closed 1966 in the village Uetze, just a bicycle excursion from Hildesheim.
Pics: Hildesheim automatic exchange at opening 1908, office building 1900 decorated upon the emperor's visit,  last manual service in Uetze

[Jack Ryan]

Funny enough, the last german manual exchange closed 1966 in the village Uetze, just a bicycle excursion from Hildesheim.

Interesting - I didn't know that.

Pics: Hildesheim automatic exchange at opening 1908, office building 1900 decorated upon the emperor's visit,  last manual service in Uetze

from Archiv Heft 1-1977?

Jack

[countryman]

Yes, the book I have is a reprint of that, also published 1977.