A ringer box is a

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

signaling device, similar to a

bell box A bell box is an audible device, often electric, which when activated, emits a chime, bell, or buzzer sound. Components The housing of the bell box may be manufactured from wood, metal, or plastic. The basic core component of a conventional be ...

. It usually contains an electromechanical gong and was used with most early desk stand telephones, such as

candlestick telephone The candlestick telephone (or pole telephone) is a style of telephone that was common from the late 1890s to the 1940s. A candlestick telephone is also often referred to as a desk stand, an upright, or a stick phone. Candlestick telephones feature ...

s and the

Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...

type

Western Electric hand telephone sets The Western Electric hand telephone sets comprise a series of telephones that were produced from 1927 by the Western Electric Company for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and the Bell System. The series features the mouthpiece ...

, which were too small to hold a ringer and other required electrical components. Many pay station telephones also used a separate ringer box. In telephony, ringer boxes and similar devices are often categorized as subscriber sets. The ringer contained in the ringer box alerts a call recipient to incoming calls by

ringing Ringing may mean: Vibrations * Ringing (signal), unwanted oscillation of a signal, leading to ringing artifacts * Vibration of a harmonic oscillator ** Bell ringing * Ringing (telephony), the sound of a telephone bell * Ringing (medicine), a ring ...

one or more metallic

bell A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an inte ...

s emitting a

ringtone A ringtone, ring tone or ring is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Originally referring to and made by the electromechanical striking of bells, the term now refers to any sound on any device alerting of a new incoming ...

. Ringers were commonly placed in the same housing as the subscriber set, which consisted of other electrical components, such as

induction coil An induction coil or "spark coil" ( archaically known as an inductorium or Ruhmkorff coil after Heinrich Rühmkorff) is a type of electrical transformer used to produce high-voltage pulses from a low-voltage direct current (DC) supply. p.98 ...

capacitor A capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy in an electric field by virtue of accumulating electric charges on two close surfaces insulated from each other. It is a passive electronic component with two terminals. The effect of ...

s, and, if required, a magneto generator. The subscriber set interfaced a telephone set to the telephone network, while magneto generators were used in a manual exchange to generate a remote ring signal. The Western Electric 302-type telephone was the first widely used Bell System telephone to include the ringer and other subscriber set components inside the housing of the telephone set. Almost all telephones manufactured since have an

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phone ringer.

Components

A ringer box consists of a case made of wood, metal, or plastic, containing bells or gongs and an electromagnetically-driven clapper which strikes the gongs when actuated. The electromagnet of the clapper responds to the alternating current sent from a central office exchange or another phone via the telephone network wiring. The direct current required by the telephone's audio circuitry is blocked with a capacitor before entering the ringer to prevent the ringer from being triggered by circuit interruptions and pulse dialing. Typical ring signals ranged from 60 to over 100 Volts at a frequency of 20-30 Hertz.

Producers

{{Portal, Telephones Ringer boxes were produced by all manufacturers of customer-premises telephone equipment. In North America, the prominent producers were

Automatic Electric Automatic Electric Company (A.E. Co.) was an American telephone equipment supplier primarily for independent telephone companies in North America, but also had a worldwide presence. With its line of automatic telephone exchanges, it was also a lon ...

, and

Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company Kellogg company logo as used from the 1920s to the 1950s. The Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company was an American manufacturer of telecommunication equipment. Anticipating the expiration of the earliest, fundamental Bell System patents, Milo G ...

, while in Europe companies such as

Siemens & Halske Siemens & Halske AG (or Siemens-Halske) was a German electrical engineering company that later became part of Siemens. It was founded on 12 October 1847 as ''Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske'' by Werner von Siemens and Johann Ge ...

and Ericsson mass-produced devices. History of the telephone