In article <telecom26.38.5@telecom-digest.org>, cnavarro@wcnet.org
says:
> On 5 Feb 2007 07:34:17 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although what you say is correct, telco
>>> had very strict rules on things. For example, a pair of wires from
>>> point A to point B which did not go near an 'actual phone line' but
>>> was still used for communication purposes was regulated according to
>>> Bell rules and defined as a 'private line' according to their
>>> rules.
>> Many large organizations, such as a transit system, city government,
>> or large manufacturing plant, had their own private telephone
>> networks. As I understand it, these networks were not
>> interconnected with Bell and operated and maintained by the owner.
>> In the 1960s and even 1970s you would see two phones on a desk, a
>> typical Bell 500 set, and then an obviously old AE (Automatic
>> Electric) phone, with a fabric cord, the metalic stripe accents on
>> the handset, etc. I doubt that the owners of such systems paid Bell
>> anything for them, otherwise, they would've interconnected and been
>> more up to date.
>> The Phila public schools had a modest PAX (private automatic exchange)
>> in most schools for internal use within the school. Each classroom
>> had a non-dial phone. When the handset lifted it rang in the school
>> office. The school office phone had a dial. No interconnection to
>> Bell. I suspect such a system required only one SxS switch and a few
>> relays. I understand that system is now gone and now classroom phones
>> have dials, and parents can call a teacher directly, instead of making
>> the teacher come to the school office where the outside line was.
>> (I'd love to know what happened to that gear when replaced.)
> Sure, in a common battery office, you didn't need any moving parts :-)
> A cord board had some number of cord pairs, an attendant headset, and
> a rotary dial mounted on the attendant's desk. You brought the
> exchange line(s) to a bank of jacks, and the box of relays to sense
> the current of the phones and bring in the signal to the board. IIRC
> we called them 557 cord boards and they still existed in answering
> services to the mid '80's. A new-fangled company called Amtelco made
> an add-in that read DID numbers to make it continue to work toward
> 1990.
> ALL of our phones were AE's, after GTE bought us out. Before that
> there were some North electric gear, like Ericofon's. I don't
> remember if we had any Stromberg keys, I only remember the AE 187
> mechanical stuff and early 1A1's. Toward the later days, we still had
> a TON of Leich crossbar in service.
> I remeber that the early PBX's had some sort of out dial restriction,
> whether by tarriff or by preference. Only the attendant console could
> dial outside, and all the other phones could dial internally, but had
> to dial 0 to make an outside call. In fact, a Leich console had both
> a dial and a keypad. The keypad dialed internal numbers and the dial
> outside.
> PAX Steppers only had to have a line finder, first selector, and a
> connector, since the 3 digit numbering plans were easy. A first
> selector only used levels 1,2,3 and maybe 9 and 0. The first levels
> went to a connector, the 9 to a trunk, and the 0 to an attendant.
> The last stepper I worked on in 1980 went to some third world
> country. Why, I haven't a clue. More of it probably went to a guy in
> New Philadelphia, OH for precious metals reclamation and landfill.
>> If anyone can offer more about such large private networks used in
>> industry, I would appreciate if you'd post it.
> Of course the most successful private network was some railroad named
> Southern Pacific. I think they went public about 1980 or so as
> Sprint.
If you really want to uncover the true root of all evil regarding
corporate dominance of the political sphere, it's that same Southern
Pacific vs. Santa Clara County in what I believe was 1860. That's when
corporates got the false notion that they should have the same rights as
a living human being. That little notion was inserted by a clerk in the
pocket of Southern Pacific and Justice Harlan made sure he referenced it
at the beginning of the case, thereby permanently encoding it in law.
T (nospam.kd1s@cox.nospam.net)