[NJARC] [ Some more Solder History for you ]

[John Dilks, K2TQN]

Some more Solder History for you...

I have some rolls of Western Electric solder, the King of 60/40.  I 
used to work there and saved a few pounds for my retirement 
projects.  Lucky me!

Also Western Electric made Fire Wire.  It is made of some low 
temperature formula of lead/tin designed to melt during a fire.  It 
came on a spool and was covered with a red cotton covering, sort of 
like old shoe lace material.  Typically it was run under, over and 
through equipment which was prone to catch fire. Sometimes it was run 
hundreds of feet from beginning to end.  Each end of the fire wire 
was connected to a circuit and a relay so that if there was a fire 
and a piece of it melted, the circuit opened, and the relay dropped, 
and the fire alarm went off in the telephone office.

It wasn't very strong and had to be supported every few feet. When we 
ran cable in the offices sometimes we would break the fire wire when 
we dropped the cable from the cable rack above.  That was always a 
memorable event.

Eventually the telephone company adopted modern fire detection 
equipment and the fire wire was retired.

Fire wire didn't have rosin in the center.

73, John Dilks, K2TQN