Video telephone apparatus

#The present invention concerns an interphone apparatus for a voice and image transmission system, commonly and currently called as a video-interphone. In this type of installation, widely used at present time, a distinction is made between an external position which includes an interphone push-button pannel with a closed circuit television camera, and one or a plurality of indoor positions, each one including an interphone apparatus of the microtelephone type incorporating a so called "monitor", that is, a kinescope for the display of the images sent by the television camera from the external position.

#Specifically, the present invention concerns the above said indoor positions, namely, the interphone apparatus and its operatively associated picture tube monitor.

#At present time, the indoor positions include a casing, generally made of a polymeric or similar material, the casing having been formed to provide seats to contain and hook the microtelephone and the monitor screen, generally placed toward the side of the microtelephone. Behind the screen, the kinescope is placed with its axis perpendicular to the screen so that the monitor forms a small television apparatus placed toward the side of the microtelephone. The arrangement presents the drawback of a considerably encumbering size and generally requires the casing or container to be at least partially embedded, due to the remarkable extension of the kinescope, in order to reduce, at least partially, the protrusion of the container from the wall. This causes firstly a greater structural complication of the indoor position whose casing must include a metallic bottom portion for its embedding; further, a remarkably laborious installation which requires the preparation of an embedding seat in the wall and the masonry work for the embedding. Furthermore, the known indoor positions can not be easely transferred from one room to another room and particularly, they can not be used as so called table installations, that is installations wherein the interphonic apparatus forming the indoor position is simply resting on a support, as a bracket, a desk or other plane surface, as a conventional telephone hand-set apparatus.

#The invention will be better understood through the detailed following specification referred to the accompanying drawings, given only as a non limiting example and wherein:

#FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an indoor interphone apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the invention;

#FIG. 2 is an elevation side view partially sectioned of the embodiment of FIG. 1.

#With reference to FIGS. 1 and 2, numeral 10 indicates a video box-like body of the interphone and 20, its hand set. The body 10 has the usual conformation and comprises a bottom 11 which may be provided with resting feet 12 for removably placing the video interphone on a desk and one or more recessed seats 13 for the possible engagement of corresponding hooks or plugs suitable to allow installation of the video interphone on a wall. Two seats 14 and 15 are formed in a frontal wall of the body 10, for the engagements of a transmitter end 21 and a receiver end 22 of a hand-set 20. Conventional auricular and microphone modules are positioned with the respective ends 21, 22 of the hand set 20. Between the seats 14 an 15, in the central part of the body 10, there is formed a viewing window 16.

#Inside the body 10 and correspondingly with the seat 15, near the end 22 opposite to the the end 21 which contacts a contact carrying plate 17, there is located a kinescope or monitor in the form of picture tube 18. The picture tube 18 is oriented with its axis parallel to the longitudinal direction of the body 10 and hence parallel to the hand-set 20 when it is engaged in the retaining seats 14 and 15.

#The picture tube 18 projects the image, sent by a remotely positioned television camera T of the external position, on a reflecting surface 19, formed e.g. by a mirror, which reflects the same image making it visible through the viewing window 16 and an aperture 23 formed in the handle of the hand-set 20 when the hand-set 20 is positioned in the seats 14 and 15, when the hand-set 20 is removed from the seats 14 and 15, or when a user wishes to speak to an individual appearing on the monitor 18, the image appears in the viewing window 16.