[GreenKeys] Western Electric RS ??

[Jim Haynes]

I always assumed KS meant Kearny Spec. but with no authoritative source.
Funny about a KS spec for lawn mowing - I would expect that to be a
Bell System Practice.  Was told once they had a BSP on polishing the
brass plates on doors to company buildings.  I've seen a few Western
Electric documents with odd designations - I guess these were things
that W.E. distributing houses did themselves, since they were not SD
drawings like you would get from Bell Labs. Things like wiring hookups
for TTY sets as the WECO distributing house might make them up for
operating company use.  Teletype didn't make those because they intended
the products to be versatile in application so the exact station wiring
was left up to the Bell Operating company or WECO for the specific
application.

Teletype had 5000 series specs for R&D to specify what a machine or
system being developed was to be.  These were considered company
confidential.  Then there were 6000 series specs that could be given
to the customer when the production run was too small or too unimportant
to rate a Bulletin.  In some cases the only difference between 5000 and
6000 specs was the tense.  5000 spec would say something shall be or
should be and 6000 spec would say is.  There were also specs for things
we bought from outside suppliers but I don't remember how these were
numbered.

About the electronic switching systems - we had someone from Bell Labs
come to Teletype and give us a lecture about them.  The point I remember
best was his saying that with an ordinary computer having it make an
undetected error was a disaster - could make a big financial or scientific
mess.  But having the system go down was an inconvenience.  The ESS
was exactly the opposite.  An error might get you a wrong number, but
that was an annoyance.  But having the whole system go down was a
disaster.  This was at the time of the #1 ESS.