This is a picture of the US Army's West Coast Relay Center from about 1955-60. (It was replaced by AUTODIN in the 1960s.) There was another similar system on the east coast (Ft. Richie, I think).

It was an AUTOMATED tape relay center. When you relay a digital signal, you need a buffer to hold the message while the routing is figured out and a open channel becomes available to relay the message on.  Paper tape was used as the buffer.  The AN/FGC-30 was all Kleinschmidt TTY equipment and the switching was done by Automatic Electric equipment.

http://www.navy-radio.com/tty-relay.htm#army  for more details

Have fun,

Duncan
K2OEQ




On 1/19/2025 2:26 PM, Chuck Rehor wrote:
Amazing photo!!! What were they all punching? The same thing to be sent out to different organizations/troops/??? Or were they archiving different things? How did they keep them all straight? Any idea what year?

On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 1:17 PM Nick England <[email protected]> wrote:
In case you are curious, here's an FGC-30 installation. Zillions of reperfs!
https://militarymuseum.org/Resources/USASTRATCOMNo.3InteriorRelay.JPG

Nick England K4NYW
www.navy-radio.com


On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 2:10 PM Nick England <[email protected]> wrote:
I've acquired a couple of interesting early documents on the Army's FGC-30 tape relay center.

One is a 1953 proposal to the Chief Signal Officer - it includes a photo of the experimental GGC-2 system installed at Fifth Army in Chicago
Another is a 1956 system description and includes photos of the FGC-30 prototype installed at Sixth Army in Davis.

Nick England K4NYW
www.navy-radio.com
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