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A knowledge of the impedance characteristics of loaded lines is of considerable importance in telephone engineering, and particularly in the engineering of telephone repeaters. The first half of the present paper deals with the impedance of non-dissipative loaded lines as a function of the frequency and the line constants, by means of description accompanied by equations transformed to the most suitable forms and by graphs of those equations; and it outlines qualitatively the nature of the modifications produced by dissipation. The characteristics are correlated with those of the corresponding smooth line. The somewhat complicated effects produced by the presence of distributed inductance are investigated rather fully. In the absence of distributed inductance a loaded line would have only one transmitting band, extending from zero frequency to the critical frequency. Actually, however, every line — even a cable — has some distributed inductance; and the effect of distributed inductance, besides altering the nominal impedance and the critical frequency, is to introduce into the attenuating range above the critical frequency a series of relatively narrow transmitting bands — here termed the “minor transmitting bands” — spaced at relatively wide intervals. The paper is concerned primarily with the impedance in the first or major transmitting band; but it investigates the minor transmitting bands sufficiently to determine how they depend on the distributed inductance, and to derive general formulas and graphical methods for finding their locations and widths — an investigation involving rather extensive analysis. The latter half of the paper describes various networks devised for simulating and for compensating the impedance of loaded lines; it furnishes design-formulas and supplementary design-methods for all of the networks depicted; and outlines a considerable number of applications pertaining to lines and to repeaters.

THE transmission of alternating currents over any transmission line between specified terminal impedances depends only on the propagation constant and the characteristic impedance of the line (at the particular frequency contemplated). In this sense, then, the properties of transmission lines may be classed broadly as propagation characteristics and impedance characteristics. In telephony we are primarily concerned with the dependence of these characteristics on the frequency, over the telephonic frequency range.