Well, in my view, it's more about, maybe, having 2 or 3 backstage effects speakers, to make phone rings and such sound more realistic, if you're not actually ringing a phone.
@Jay Ashworth I used to have a collection of ring-able phones in
desk, wall and Princess models in an assortment of colors and in dial and pushbutton styles. I also had a selection of radios with the
power cord connected to the
speaker and wired between the
ground and
neutral contacts so they wouldn't self destruct if someone inadvertently plugged them into a correctly wired live
receptacle. This was especially convenient if they needed to be carried on
stage by an actor and plugged into what appeared to be a standard duplex
receptacle as part of their
blocking.
I hated the demise of analog TV as we had a table top TV
fed by a 6
conductor cable with the opposite end broke out to three connectors: One pair of conductors
fed 120 volts AC to the TV. Another pair carried
speaker level audio directly to the internal
speaker while the third pair of conductors took the
screen from black to normal brightness with a simple
contact closure. It was a vacuum tube
CRT model and could either be used on a table top or housed within the cabinet of a
console model TV. So long as the set was facing
up stage, we could have its rabbit ears or dipole antenna tuned to a strong local station and the
screen would provide the genuine constantly shifting glow of a real TV receiving a broadcast. The direct connection to the
speaker allowed whatever audio we wanted to emanate directly from the internal
speaker and the remote 'brightness
mute' allowed us to
switch the illumination / on or off with split second timing while the 120 volt feed allowed us to have it's tube electronics
power up in their normal sweet time as TV's of the era did. It was really neat to have the pre-show music
fade as the
house went to half then open the curtain to
reveal a performer facing
downstage towards his TV with the same music coming from the TV in sync as the
house speakers faded with the scene lighting coming up.
All this went away for this TV when local stations quit broadcasting analogue TV.
Taking this back to your telephone comments: Over the years, I "acquired" a couple of genuine Bell Telephone / Northern
Electric Sola "Sub-Cycle" ringing
voltage generators putting out 90 Volts at 25 cycles /
Hertz. These were both fairly chunky / beefy devices. My most favorite was the last model I "acquired". It was a small, white plastic encased, "
wall-wart" that plugged directly into 120 VAC and output 90 volts at 30
Hertz. In my part of the world, 30
Hertz was a common PBX / Hotel / large office dial tone while 25
Hertz was your typical "Outside
Line". Going back in history, we used to have 25
Hertz AC in our homes in Canada and Bell was using 90 volts / 25
Hertz to ring bells. When our electricity changed to 60
Hertz, Bell chose to use direct coupled MG's [Motor Generators] with 60
Hertz motors spinning 25
Hertz generators to develop their 90 volt 25
Hertz ringing voltages.
Nothing sounds more like a phone bell than a phone being rang from a 25 or 30
Hertz 90 volt source. Phones never sound quite right when being rang with 60
Hertz, they just
don't sound right.
Thanks
@Jay Ashworth for another trip down memory lane.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.