Reed relay

A reed relay (sometimes also known as Herkon relay) is a type of relay that uses an electromagnet to control one or more reed switches. The contacts are of magnetic material and the electromagnet acts directly on them without requiring an armature to move them. Sealed in a long, narrow glass tube, the contacts are protected from corrosion, and are usually plated with silver, which has very low resistivity but is prone to corrosion when exposed, rather than corrosion-resistant but more resistive gold as used in the exposed contacts of high quality relays. The glass envelope may contain multiple reed switches or multiple reed switches can be inserted into a single bobbin and actuate simultaneously. Reed switches have been manufactured since the 1930s.

As the moving parts are small and lightweight, reed relays can switch much faster than relays with armatures. They are mechanically simple, making for reliability and long life.

A few million reed relays were used from the 1930s to the 1960s for memory functions in Bell System electromechanical telephone exchanges. Often a multiple-reed relay was used, with one of the reeds latching the relay, and the other or others performing logic or memory functions. Most reed relays in the crossbar switching systems of the 1940s through the 1970s were packaged in groups of five. Such a "reed pack" was able to store one decimal digit, encoded in a two-out-of-five code (74210 variant) for easy validity checking by wire spring relay logic.

Such an electrically latching reed relay requires continuous power to maintain state, unlike magnetically latching relays, such as ferreed (ferrite and reed relay) or the later remreed (remanent reed relay).

In the Bell System Stored Program Control exchange systems of the 1970s, reed relays were no longer needed for data storage, but tens of millions of them were packaged in arrays for voice path switching. In the 1ESS switch, the cores were made of a magnetically remanent alloy, so the relay could latch magnetically instead of latching electrically. This "Ferreed" method reduced power consumption and allowed both contacts to be used for voice path. The coils were wired for coincident current selection similar to a magnetic core memory, so operating the contacts for one crosspoint would release the other crosspoints in its row and column.

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