Thoughts And Trivia

I cherish my invention as a kid, of a Telephone Exchange for kid’s thread and ice-cream cup toy telephones.   The invention is extremely simple.   I wonder why no other kid had invented it before (or after).  The high that this generated still provides me a sense of achievement.

I initially tried to find a solution to the problem that such thread and cup telephones can only function in straight line, but not across a bend. If there is any obstruction on the way which touches the thread, it did not function.
I made a large diaphragm of paper on a cardboard cut out.  This card-board diaphragm I fixed at the corner(Bend in passage) at 45⁰. Threads from two perpendicular directions were anchored to this diaphragm.  The threads could be kept taut without touching the bend.  Now you could talk from two perpendicular directions.
It was a simple step further to make a cube of card board (withot top and bottom panel). Diaphragms of paper were fixed on four cardboard cutout sides of this cube. Then these diaphragms were connected from inside of cube by taut threads to the diaphragm perpendicular to it on its right, which in turn was connected to the perpendicular one on it's right thus completing a circuit of all four diaphragms  For better results the opposite diaphragms were also connected by separate threads. This cube I fixed on the roof of the concourse in the house. Now threads from all directions could be connected to the four diaphragms of this cube.
This was the thread telephone exchange which allowed me to talk to any other threaded telephone.  The important point was that the other telephone could even be hidden behind a wall, but I could talk to it.  All my siblings played with it various spy games etc.
Great! and simple.   NO!!

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Wednesday, October 05, 2005