Impact activated telephone method and apparatus

Telephonic communications – Supervisory or control line signaling – Substation originated

Reexamination Certificate

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Details

C379S045000, C379S355020, C340S870030, C455S422100

Reexamination Certificate

active

06263069

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
I. Field of the Invention
This invention is in the general field of emergency telephones, alarms and monitoring systems and equipment;
The invention is more particularly in the fields of emergency, ADA Compliant, and invalid telephones;
The invention is even more particularly directed to the field of such telephones which are activated overtly, or covertly, by mere disturbing or jarring of the telephone directly or indirectly.
II. Description of th Prior Art
There are many emergency telephone systems and devices, too numerous to detail here. All heretofore available emergency telephone and monitoring systems require installation of elaborate telephone or other equipment and a reasonable degree of mental/physical coordination for the pressing of buttons, or the like
The present invention requires only a minute ability to contact, or move, a telephone to activate emergency telephone transmission and/or monitor a location, give the location, and enable one at a distance from the location to know the location and obtain knowledge of activities at the location of the telephone or monitor. The manner in which the present invention works is that a telephone or the like is activated by means of an impact upon the telephone or some other article associated with the telephone in such manner that impact upon the article is communicated to the telephone.
Except for my co-pending application for patent Ser. No. 09/085,328 referred to above, there is no prior art known to me in this latter described field. In that sense, there is no prior art.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
There are many uses for emergency telephones, particularly ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant devices. Some examples of such uses are emergency telephones in elevators, emergency phone towers in public and remote areas, and the like. There are numerous other examples.
Heretofore systems for satisfying these needs all require expensive installation of equipment and they all require that a person activating the device must have some reasonable muscular ability and coordination to reach and press an activating button, lift a receiver, or some other such direct action.
One of the greatest deficiencies of the heretofore known emergency telephones is the inability of many permanently (or temporarily) disabled persons to activate such emergency telephones. For example, a perfectly healthy and able person in an area having an emergency telephone tower may fall an break a hip or suffer some other injury making it impossible to get to an upright position. Yet, such person may be able to crawl or drag himself or herself to the location of the emergency telephone tower only to be frustrated in attempts to get up to the telephone handset or activation button. With my present invention, such person need only to strike the tower to cause the emergency telephone to be activated. Then, such person may shout, or speak loudly enough to explain the predicament. Note that in this example the telephone may even be activated from a distance by a person who cannot even crawl to the tower by throwing a rock and hitting the tower from a distance.
Another example would be a person (of which there are many) who cannot lift an arm and is confined to a motorized wheelchair which can be operated by various mechanisms (a head mounted control for example, or other mechanisms). Such a person may need to use an emergency telephone for various reasons, such as an elevator emergency telephone, or other emergency type telephone but cannot reach up to press a button or lift a handset. With my present invention, all such person would need to do would be to run the wheelchair into a structure (a wall, a pedestal, tower, etc.) where the telephone of this invention is mounted.
One additional problem encountered with emergency telephone, particularly towers in remote locations and otherwise, is vandalism. My present invention will be a great deterrent to vandalism. If a vandal commences to vandalize an emergency telephone of this invention, the telephone and any auxiliary device such as a strobe light, siren, etc. will be activated. This will effectively bring authorities to the scene and will undoubtedly cause the vandal to make a rapid exit.
I have accomplished this by inserting an impact activated arrangement into the telephone circuitry in such manner that the telephone is always ready to go to off-hook (activated) condition, except that the power circuit to the telephone is interrupted by means to turn the power on activated by an impact sensing arrangement which turns on the phone power and maintains it on until a reset arrangement is activated either manually or by an automatic timing arrangement.
It is an object of this invention to provide an emergency telephone which can be activated by persons unable to press a button or lift a handset or the like;
It is another object of this invention to provide an impact activated emergency (or non-emergency) telephone;
Another object of this invention is to provide an impact activated telephone which may be activated by impact to another article with which such telephone is associated;
Another object of this invention is to provide an emergency telephone which will be activated in case of vandalism;
Another object of this invention is to provide such an impact activated telephone which may be activated by collision of an object activated by a disabled person.


REFERENCES:
patent: Re. 34677 (1994-07-01), Ray et al.
patent: 4137429 (1979-01-01), Stockdale
patent: 4237344 (1980-12-01), Moore
patent: 4453043 (1984-06-01), Zielinski et al.
patent: 5465296 (1995-11-01), McMonagle, Jr. et al.
patent: 5475750 (1995-12-01), McMonagle, Jr. et al.
patent: 5475751 (1995-12-01), McMonagle, Jr. et al.
patent: 5742666 (1998-04-01), Alpert
patent: 5896565 (1999-04-01), Miller

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