Navyphone
A Navyphone is a rugged type of telephone made specifically for shipboard applications using short-range circuits. For some time, the Royal Navy called these "loud-speaking telephones", but the word "navyphone" was coming into usage as early as 1902.[1] They considered them as being slightly different to long-range telephones.
Form Factor
Navyphones varied considerably in their physical details, not all of them resembling a conventional telephone. Some resembled intercoms, and some were rather comical in appearance with trumpets or large horns in front or to be clopped over one's ears as though sharing a secret with a sunflower. Most were to be mounted on a bulkhead or other convenient vertical surface.
British Patterns
British navyphones were supplied by the Graham company, and identified like many tools of the Royal Navy: by Pattern numbers. Most were in watertight metal cases with receivers at the back with diaphragms facing the back of the instrument, projecting into trumpets which carried the sound out to the side. The transmitter was placed in front and could be revolved by hand although no clear description is offered of the plane of rotation.
They were most often battery-powered, initially, powered in pairs off six pattern 1453 cells in a pattern 1704 battery box until the Lord Nelson, Bellerophon and later classes in which they were powered by a motor generator.[2]
| Navyphones in British Service, 1914 | ||
| Pattern 1855 Navyphone | upper deck type push-to-talk bell | |
| Pattern 1856 Navyphone | engine room type push-to-talk bell | |
| Pattern 1856A Navyphone | engine room type | |
| Pattern 2108 Navyphone | fire control, control position paired with 2109 push-to-talk no bell | |
| Pattern 2108A Navyphone | fire control | fitted in some cabins in Dreadnought and later ships |
| Pattern 2108B Navyphone | fire control | |
| Pattern 2109 Navyphone | fire control, gun position paired with 2108 push-to-talk bell | |
| Pattern 2109A Navyphone | fire control | fitted in some cabins in Dreadnought and later ships |
| Pattern 2109B Navyphone | fire control | |
| Pattern 2140 Navyphone | universal type | |
| Pattern 2140A Navyphone | upper deck type normal use or fire control suitable for generator | |
| Pattern 860 Navyphone | fire control | |
| Pattern 861 Navyphone | fire control | |
| Pattern 862 Navyphone | fire control | |
| Pattern 863 Navyphone | general use | |
| Pattern 541 Navyphone | cabin, an improved type, having a handset | "fitted in recent ships" |
| Pattern 2461 Navyphone | general use, buzzer call-up | Lion and Orion classes and later |
| Pattern 2461A Navyphone | with bell contact | Lion and Orion classes and later |
| Pattern 2462 Navyphone | cabin, buzzer call-up | Lion and Orion classes and later |
| Pattern 2463 Navyphone | fire control, buzzer call-up | Lion and Orion classes and later |
| Pattern 2464 Navyphone | fire control, buzzer call-up | Lion and Orion classes and later |
| Pattern 2465 Navyphone | fire control (transmitter only), buzzer call-up | Lion and Orion classes and later |
| Pattern 2466 Navyphone | destroyer or exposed positions, buzzer call-up | Lion and Orion classes and later |
| Pattern 3330 Navyphone | general use, buzzer call-up | Queen Elizabeth class and later |
| Pattern 3331 Navyphone | cabin, buzzer call-up | Queen Elizabeth class and later |
| Pattern 3332 Navyphone | fire control, buzzer call-up | Queen Elizabeth class and later |
| Pattern 3333 Navyphone | fire control, buzzer call-up | Queen Elizabeth class and later |
| Pattern 3334 Navyphone | fire control (transmitter only), buzzer call-up | Queen Elizabeth class and later |
See Also
Footnotes
Bibliography
