I took the cover off the doorbell box to see if I could get an unobtrusive paint sample off the wall (I couldn’t). But I was surprised by the apparent simplicity of a doorbell mechanism.
As How Stuff Works says, “[C]onventional doorbells are one of the coolest machines around, precisely because of their simplicity.”
The doorbell photo at How Stuff Works is accompanied by this text: “This doorbell has two solenoids, each wired to a different ringer button. One solenoid hits two tone bars, while the other hits only one.” Note that we don’t have a wire on the screw labelled “REAR,” since we don’t have a back-door doorbell.
Hmm. So I could move the wire on FRONT to REAR and a different (single) tone would probably result from pushing the front-door button…
Retired economics professor (“dismal scientist”). Married 40+ years to the love of my life; we have two grown daughters, both married, two granddaughters and a...
