[GreenKeys] This will take you back many years...

[Lorence Brown]

You both have touched some dear remembrances.  Aside from the Exchange names
in Detroit (and my home town further north) I remember the mechanical
aspects of my early days.  When I started in 1967 in Michigan Bell, only a
couple Panel Offices were left in Detroit - yeh, 11' high & 17' to the
ceiling!!  Those were the offices with the three tier Main Frames - some
real jumper nightmares.  They were in operation for a few more years after I
started since I remember the Project Engineers talking about maintenance on
the Panel machines - Waxing to reduce switching line noise.
    RE: Rotary switches; most of the rural (CDO - Community Dial Offices)
were rotary in Mich.  For years I only knew them as 'rotary' until I went to
an independent office and a local switchman talked about the x-y Stroger and
I got a history lesson.  They ALL sure had a distinctive sounds.  Speaking
of sounds, I remember a 5XB office in the suburbs (Utica, MI) that around
11:30 would go almost silent, then at 11:55 come back up with a roar of
switching traffic noise.  Very interesting.
    I started off with the company I was doing N-Carrier Impulse Noise
measurements as management.  At first it was N1, then N2 & N3 - the whole
reason for the surveys and follow-up repairs/bonding/grounding was the
forthcoming data network - boy, the TTY at 150 baud was a busy piece of
machinery to me.  Then 300 and then the thermal printers at 1200 - and so
on.  At one point, I managed a few programmers and we had a print station
that had a drum printer, full width computer paper, had a row of hammers
that would pick off the characters as they spun by.  Our printer ran as a
remote off a main-frame - the controller was a PDP-8.  We ran a construction
Budget program for the company that ran of the company's mainframe printer.
A laser printer, would have a transparency that would 'flash' the form image
on the paper, then print in the characters on the paper - pin feed
continuous sheets in an oversized box (taller than normal).  Would empty the
box in around three minutes.  I was impressed.  This was probably back
around the early 1980s.
    Really something when you consider we've grown up (as kids 5-12) during
the vacuum tube days, matured (teenage 13-18) during the solid state
evolution, and watched the data/computer revolution (20-current).  What a
marvelous time.

Larry


> From: Don Robert House <k9tty at dls.net>
> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 13:18:43 -0600
> To: <comcents at bellsouth.net>
> Cc: <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] This will take you back many years...
> 
> You can still see a panel switch at the museum of communications in
> Seattle.
>   I missed out seeing our last one at the EDgewater CO in Chicago
> before it was removed.
> The switch frames were eleven (11) feet tall and the switch mechanism
> was referred to as a "Monkey on a Stick"
> Panel offices used a craftsman that no other type offices used.
> "Equipment Cleaner"
> 
> On 2 Mar 2009, at 12:35 AM, Randy or Sherry Guttery wrote:
> 
> Don Robert House wrote:
>> I remember I was disappointed when our number was changed from
>> CLearbrook 3 to 253...
> 
> I grew up in Los Angeles - which was somewhat of the "wild west" when
> it came to phone service and phone companies.  In most of the country
> - a large city - even a region was usually served by one company -
> usually a Bell company of AT&T.  Los Angeles, on the other hand had
> several major players - not always playing well together. Los Angeles
> itself was (mostly) Bell / AT&T - using Western Electric equipment.
> However - many of the surrounding communities - such as Long Beach,
> cities of the San Gabriel Valley, etc. - were General Telephone
> customers - mostly using equipment by Automatic Electric. That made
> for some strange "interactions" here and there...
> 
> In the early 1950s - within LA itself - you only had to dial 5 digits
> - and they were listed (usually) as (something like) 7-1234.  It was
> when you called some of the suburban areas - like Long Beach, Norwalk,
> etc. you had to use the Exchange "pre-fix".  Norwalk was University,
> Bellflower was Torrey (which you might note is NOT one of the favored
> Bell pre-fixes - not surprising since it was GT); West Covina, La
> Puente and the un-incorporated areas in that area were Edgewood;  Both
> University and Edgewood are on the "Bell list".
> 
> Another interesting "thing" out of that era - was that even as mobile
> phones and the age of digital communications were getting underway in
> the late 1970s - calls were still being connected by hand in Bell's
> Avalon (Santa Catalina Island) exchange via a local cord switchboard.
> 
> Another "fallout" of the mixed equipment - I had been in a couple of
> switch exchanges - and had never seen a rotary stepper... GT used
> something called a panel switch in many of it exchanges - which steps
> in the X and Y plane - rather than a half-circle like a Strowger.
> 
> yeah - brings back a few memories!
> -- 
> randy guttery
>