Doorbells are one of those everyday devices we take for granted. On the surface, they couldn't be simpler: You press a button, which completes a circuit, which turns on some sort of noisemaker. In a world full of computers, cars and televisions, that doesn't seem so impressive.
But when you take off the cover and see what's going on, conventional doorbells are one of the coolest machines around, precisely because of their simplicity. Doorbells put the basic principle of electromagnetism to work in remarkable, innovative ways. The core of a conventional doorbell is an electromagnet. An electromagnet is a coil of wire, often wrapped around a piece of magnetic metal.
Electromagnets work on a very simple principle. Running electrical current through wire creates a very small magnetic field around the wire. Coiling the wire amplifies this magnetic field, so it has a substantial effect on any magnetic objects around it.
When you hold down a doorbell button, it closes an electrical circuit so that household current flows through the electromagnet (or electromagnets) by way of a transformer. The transformer is a simple device that takes the 120-volt household current and steps it down to a 10-volt current. This current is then passed through the electromagnet wire.
The magnetic field of the electromagnet is put to work to drive some sort of a noisemaking apparatus. There are a number of different ways to configure the doorbell components in order to produce different sorts of noises. In the next couple of sections, we'll look at the most common system in place today: the chime.
The standard doorbell design today makes a softer chiming sound. In the next section, we'll see how this system works. A chime doorbell uses a specialized sort of electromagnet called a solenoid. A solenoid is just an electromagnet where the coiled wire surrounds a metal piston. The piston contains magnetically conductive metal, so it can be moved backward or forward by the electromagnetic field. Press the button in the diagram below to see how this works.
In this design, the solenoid piston consists of an iron core mounted to a non-magnetic metal bar. When there is no power to the electromagnet, a spring pushes the piston to the left, and the iron core extends outside of the wire coil. When you turn the electromagnet on (by pressing the doorbell button), the iron core is drawn to the magnetic field, so it slides into the center of the coiled wire.
As the iron core slides to the right, the end of the piston strikes the right-hand tone bar. The tone bar vibrates, producing a particular note. This is the "ding" sound.
As long as you hold the doorbell button, current will flow through the electromagnet and the piston will remain in this position. But when you release the button, the current will stop flowing through the electromagnet and the magnetic field will collapse. The spring snaps the piston back to the left, where it hits the tone bar on the other side. The second tone bar produces the "dong" sound. You can make more elaborate tone sequences by adding more solenoids and tone bars.
Some variations on this design produce a different tone pattern when someone rings the back doorbell than when someone rings the front doorbell. Each doorbell button closes a separate circuit, connected to separate solenoids in the doorbell mechanism. In the simplest design, one of the solenoids hits a bumper instead of the second tone bar. In this way, one doorbell button will trigger a "ding-dong" tone and the other button will trigger only a "ding" tone.
In recent years, more and more people have been installing electronic doorbells in their homes. An electronic doorbell doesn't have any electromagnets or tone bars. Instead, it has an integrated circuit (IC) that registers when the button has been pressed. The IC triggers a digitally recorded song or message. A lot of electronic doorbells have a wireless control system so the doorbell mechanism doesn't have to be specially wired.
Electronic doorbells are growing in popularity, but most homes still use conventional electromagnet doorbells. This classic design may not play elaborate songs or messages, but it is so simple and sturdy that it should be around for a long time to come.