[GreenKeys] Telephone opportunity in the same spirit as teletype

[Harold Hallikainen]

My wife used to be an operator for General Telephone. She worked on a cord
board.

In junior high school, a friend found a busted up pinball machine at the
Berkeley (CA) dump. He brought home the pieces, and we made a step
telephone system out of it. It was similar to the intercom line on 1A2 key
systems in that there was a common talk path with individual ringing via
the dialed number.

Then in high school, I was given a bunch of Strowger step switches
discarded by Pacific Telephone. So that friend and I built a small step
switch in my parent's garage. We had two digit dialing throughout the
neigborhood with wires (telephone field wire from the military surplus
stores areound the Oakland airport) running through trees. I still
remember that the A relay was a dual coil relay with -48V at one end and
ground at the other. The line to the remote telephone set went between the
two coils. The relay detected the hook or dial state and also acted as an
audio frequency choke so we could capacitively couple off the line to
carry voice to the switch wipers.

I also remember that the B relay was a slow release relay. It had a copper
slug around the coil. It was used to separate out dial pulses from
on-hook.

I remember sitting in Mr. Zunich's math class and drawing relay circuits
as I worked on getting the system to work.

We also ran wires through trees for a Teletype circuit with a model 15 at
each end. We had a slow release current sense relay at each end of the
circuit and a loop supply at each end. When idle, both loop supplies were
off, and the relays would release turning off the motors. We could turn on
the loop supply at either end of the circuit to start the motors and leave
a message.

Fun stuff!

Harold
https://w6iwi.org


On Tue, September 29, 2026 8:39 pm, MIKE MCAULEY via GreenKeys wrote:
> Will Ernestine be on the line saying...
>
>
> "Gracious good afternoon, is this the party to whom I'm speaking to??"
>
>
>
> Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 7:40 PM, Sean Reed via
> GreenKeys<greenkeys at mailman.qth.net> wrote:   It’s a lot of fun.  We
> have 4-5 of these days a year.
>
> SWR
>
>
>> On Sep 29, 2026, at 9:26 PM, Richard Knoppow via GreenKeys
>> <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>   Sounds fascinating, I remember as a very young child  being
>> allowed to listen in while long distant calls were "built". 
>> Norm&ally, the LD operator would call you back when she had you&r party
>> but you could listen in while the call was connected up or "built" step
>> by step and hear each operator on the way. I am old enough to pre-date
>> DDD.  This was strictly within the U.S.  I did listen in later while
>> international calls were set up on both RCA and AT&T via short wave.
>> Setting up was done en-clear. AT&T used a "shuffler" for the actual
>> calls but RCA used only inversion so it was possible to listen in by
>> careful tuning.
>>
>>> On 9/29/2026 6:22 PM, Sean Reed via GreenKeys wrote:
>>> While my interest in this group is on Model 15 teletypes, I thought
>>> I’d share the following which many here may also find of interest:
>>> Sunday, October 4th  will be the next operating session of The
>>> Operators Network from 0600-2359 CDT.  Reach the operator by dialing
>>> (402) 402-0121, from C*Net by dialing 1-231-1111 then dialing a 0, or
>>> From PhreakNet simply dial 0.
>>> Join us as we recreate the Long Distance experience of mid 20th
>>> Century pre-Operator Toll Dialing.  Calls will be handled through
>>> vintage cord boards and other connections with live operators between
>>> London and LA, and across the U.S.A. before reaching the called
>>> number.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Richard Knoppow
>> Los Angeles
>> WB6KBL
>> SKCC 19998
>>
>>
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>>
>>>>> Jordan Spencer Cunningham's GreenKeys Search Tool:
>>>>> https://teletype.net/gksearch
>>>>> 2002-to-present greenkeys archive:
>>>>> http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
>>>>> 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive:
>>>>> http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
>>>>> Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool:
>>>>> http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html
>>>>>
>>
>> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
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>> Message delivered to swreed68 at gmail.com
>>
> ______________________________________________________________
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>
>
>>>> Jordan Spencer Cunningham's GreenKeys Search Tool:
>>>> https://teletype.net/gksearch
>>>> 2002-to-present greenkeys archive:
>>>> http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
>>>> 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive:
>>>> http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
>>>> Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool:
>>>> http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html
>>>>
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
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>
>
>>>> Jordan Spencer Cunningham's GreenKeys Search Tool:
>>>> https://teletype.net/gksearch
>>>> 2002-to-present greenkeys archive:
>>>> http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
>>>> 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive:
>>>> http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
>>>> Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool:
>>>> http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html
>>>>
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
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> Message delivered to harold at w6iwi.org


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