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Post Office Box (electricity)

 

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Post Office Box (electricity)



 
 
The Post Office Box was a wheatstone bridge
Wheatstone bridge

A Wheatstone bridge is a measuring instrument invented by Samuel Hunter Christie in 1833 and improved and popularized by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1843....
 style testing device with pegs and spring arms to close electrical circuits and measure properties of the circuit under test.

The boxes were used in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 by engineers from the then General Post Office
General Post Office

The name General Post Office is or has been used by most Commonwealth countries for mail and telecommunications services.*United Kingdom, see General Post Office which operated under that name until 1969....
, who were responsible for UK telecommunications to trace electrical faults.

Post Office Boxes were common pieces of scientific apparatus in the UK A Level public examination Physics
Physics

Physics is the natural science which examines basic concepts such as energy, force, and spacetime and all that derives from these, such as mass, charge, matter and its Motion ....
 syllabus in the 1960s

A typical Post Office Box is in a wooden box with a hinged lid and a metal or bakelite
Bakelite

Bakelite is a material based on the thermosetting plastic phenol formaldehyde resin polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, developed in 1907?1909 by Demographics of Belgium Dr....
 panel showing circuit connections.






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The Post Office Box was a wheatstone bridge
Wheatstone bridge

A Wheatstone bridge is a measuring instrument invented by Samuel Hunter Christie in 1833 and improved and popularized by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1843....
 style testing device with pegs and spring arms to close electrical circuits and measure properties of the circuit under test.

The boxes were used in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 by engineers from the then General Post Office
General Post Office

The name General Post Office is or has been used by most Commonwealth countries for mail and telecommunications services.*United Kingdom, see General Post Office which operated under that name until 1969....
, who were responsible for UK telecommunications to trace electrical faults.

Post Office Boxes were common pieces of scientific apparatus in the UK A Level public examination Physics
Physics

Physics is the natural science which examines basic concepts such as energy, force, and spacetime and all that derives from these, such as mass, charge, matter and its Motion ....
 syllabus in the 1960s

A typical Post Office Box is in a wooden box with a hinged lid and a metal or bakelite
Bakelite

Bakelite is a material based on the thermosetting plastic phenol formaldehyde resin polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, developed in 1907?1909 by Demographics of Belgium Dr....
 panel showing circuit connections. Coils of wire are wound non-inductively, mounted in the body of the box, and have a negligible temperature co-efficient.

Pairs of ratio arms are each 10, 100, 1000 ohm
Ohm

The ohm is the SI unit of electrical impedance or, in the direct current case, electrical resistance, named after Georg Ohm....
s. Resistance arms contains a number of coils from 1 to 5000 ohms with a plug for infinite resistance.