[Boatanchors] WAS Goodies NOW Bell

[Richard Knoppow]

     When I was growing up we spent our summers in rural Michigan. We 
had a magneto phone as described below.  Each year the phone man would 
come out and put fresh batteries in it.  I have long since forgotten our 
ring or how many there were on the line.   It seems to me that all crank 
phones were installed for people about 6'2".  I had to stand on a chair 
to use it and I think my mom did too.  It was a good weather predictor;  
anytime there were thunderstorms anywhere around the phone would go 
dead.  I used to think this was because of downed lines but now I think 
they probably grounded everything at the CO at the approach of a storm.
      The first automatic system in Los Angeles went in the Hollywood 
office in the early  1920s and stayed in service with its step-by-step 
switches until replaced with an ESS.

On 4/11/2015 12:09 PM, Glen Zook via Boatanchors wrote:
> I grew up with General Telephone in the city that had the very first automatic telephone system in the world was installed in 1892
> http://thephonebooth.com/phoneadverts/independents/hello-central-goodbye.html
>   
> General Telephone bought out the company that had installed the system.  In the late 1950s my grandmother, who lived on the main highway to South Bend, Indiana, had a "crank style" telephone, with a dry cell battery on the outside of her house.  She was on a 16-party line and I still remember her "ring", 2-shorts and a long!  I don't know when that part of General Telephone updated the system because my grandmother moved into the city.
> The city did not get direct distance dialing until sometime in the mid 1970s.  My father was at my house, in Richardson, Texas, around 1970, and wanted to call a relative in LaPorte, Indiana (my home town).  He called the operator, instead of just dialing the number, to place the call.  He was surprised when she told him that he could actually dial the number himself.
> During the 1970s and well into the 1980s, even though most of the Dallas, Texas, area was in a Bell Telephone service area, the company, that I owned at the time, was in a General Telephone service area.  The telephone service was terrible.  One major company actually installed a private microwave system to handle all their telephone needs back to another site which was in the Bell Telephone service area.  General Telephone got very upset and even made a formal complaint to the FCC about the microwave system.  Fortunately, the FCC agreed that the company could do whatever they wanted to using their private microwave system.
> The Bell System was considerably better!  Rates, for local telephone service, went up considerably when the Bell System was "broken up".  However, today, a good number of those "Baby Bell" companies have again joined together under the AT&T label which, when the Bell System was divided, was their engineering and development division. Glen, K9STH
>
> Website: http://k9sth.net
>        From: D C _Mac_ Macdonald <k2gkk at hotmail.com>
>   To: N0DGN Bob Bethman <rbethman at comcast.net>; "boatanchors at mailman.qth.net" <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
>   Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2015 1:50 PM
>   Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] WAS Goodies NOW Bell
>     
> We could only call the adjoining town without a toll.  To call the town on the other side of the MAIN town (4 miles away) was a toll call.  BOO HISS!
>   
>
>    
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-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL