Technical Information

The Watsonlinc Connector.

No physical connection is made to the wires inside the cable as the Watsonlinc connector picks up the signal through the insulation. This is the first time that it has been possible to record a telephone conversation through the insulation of the telephone cable.

This technology has been designed and made in England and is being made available commercially for the first time in these products. Invented by British inventor Mike Watson this technology has won many awards including the 'NatWest/BP Awards for Technology', 'The Sunday Times/Honeywell British Innovation Award', the ' Electronics Award at The Great British Innovations and Inventions Fair' and finalist in 'The 1992 Archimedes Awards for the Excellence in Engineering and Best Technical Innovation'. It has been featured on the BBC TV program 'Tomorrow's World'. Patents have been granted or are pending throughout the world.

The Watsonlinc connector works on telephone cables and so cannot work on hand held mobiles. The original Retell Model 101 is designed for that application. (Model 701 and 702 work on cordless phones as they attach to the line cord that runs from the base unit to the wall.

Technical Details.

A telephone cable is straight and has very little electricity flowing through it. That means that the field around it is very, very small. Another issue is that a telephone cable contains two wires because the telephone needs a complete circuit to work. The electricity in each of the two wires is flowing in opposite directions. This results in two magnetic fields flowing in opposite directions and, because the two wires are so close together, the fields almost totally overlap. Therefore the fields effectively cancel each other out.

If the two fields cancel each other out this will render the signal impossible to detect. Even if this did not make it impossible the fields are so small they virtually disappear. That is why if you hold a 'rubber sucker' type of telephone pick-up coil against a telephone cable you cannot hear anything. Then on top of that we live in a magnetic 'sea' because of all the machinery, such as computers and copiers, around us which do contain big coils of wire and transformers which put out fields millions of times bigger than anything from even a single telephone wire. This means that any tiny signals from a telephone cable are lost in the ambient magnetic noise.

So how does the Watsonlinc work?

We're pleased to say that the details of the Watsonlinc are protected by patents around the world. Retell and Mike Watson are sorry that we cannot tell you more about the expensive and sophisticated techniques involved but this does not stop you from owning the technology!