Importance

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Abstract

An apparatus is disclosed which is controlled by telephone rings over a telephone line and used to momentarily interrupt power to a computerized appliance. The apparatus waits for a preset number of rings, which are accumulated over one or more unanswered calls. The ring count is cleared if consecutive rings from separate calls are not received within a selectable time of each other. Once the preset count level is reached, the apparatus automatically turns the power to the appliance off for a period of time and then back on again. Because the apparatus may accumulate the necessary number of rings from separate telephone calls, it can be used on a telephone line to which an answering device, a modem for example, is connected, even though that device persists in inhibiting telephone rings by answering before the number of rings needed to activate the apparatus is reached on each call. A second telephone line may be connected to the apparatus and used in place of the first telephone line in the case when the first telephone line is busy and cannot accept telephone rings.

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First Claim