The screw terminals were on the front of switches many many years ago. 2 way switch 4.
Electrics Two Way Lighting
Schematic diagram of two way switch. Two very old three way switches. This method is commonly used now days as it is efficient than the two wire control system. This was unsafe having live electrical terminals so close to a metal wall plate. They are wired so that operation of either. 2 way switch 3 wire system new harmonised cable colours 2 way switching means having two or more switches in different locations to control one lamp. This should give you a good basic understanding how the 2 way switch circuit works and will help you in adding or changing a 2 way switch.
As you can see in the schematic diagram of 2 way switch circuit below the common of both the switches are short circuited. Fig 2 below shows how we achieve this configuration. Two way switching schematic wiring diagram 3 wire control the schematic is nice and simple to visualise the principal of how a two way switch works but is little help when it coms to actually wiring this up in real life. This is the new method to make a 2 way switching connection as it is slightly different from the two wire control method. 3 way switch schematic wiring diagram. So now that you have a basic concept of wiring a 2 way switch lets look at the following 2 way switch diagrams to see which type of circuit scenario you have.
Two very old three way switches are depicted in the photo above.