Reed relay

A reed 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.

Memory device

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.