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Author Topic: Upload your random pictures (part 2) John Walsh Film God Posts: 2490 From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way Registered: Oct 1999 posted 11-06-2005 06:53 PM                     (Phil's picture) Telephone exchange with steppers?  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-07-2005 01:38 AM                        From Flickr  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 11-07-2005 06:04 PM                  John, Yes, those are working Strowger (Step-by-Step) Switches (relays) installed in a private residence. Some people install 35mm (and 70mm) projection systems in their home, and others install a working telco mini-central office in the basement of their 3bed/2bath abode. People have the weirdest hobbies! HA! ... Installed after the "Line Finder" relay, the Strowger relay is activated by a customer's rotary dialing pulses. The relay's central shaft can move up 1 to 10 positions, and also rotate 1 to 10 positions. This allows the switch to choose 1 out of 100 possible contacts. To get the required digits in selecting a particular phone number, several of these are hooked in series in a "Trunk Line" to a prefix (exchange) and then lastly to the specific number called. These were commercially discontinued MANY years ago...but still cool to watch.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 11-07-2005 07:45 PM                     Were'nt they also known as the "click n bang" switches.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-07-2005 09:29 PM                        Phil, that's awesome. If I ever win the lottery (which is unlikely, since I've never bought a ticket), I'm installing a mechanical phone switch. ...And people think I'm weird just because my living room phone is a WECO 1C2 payphone. (Phones and hard hat were legally acquired. No, I don't have a 1A2 KSU (yet). Yes, the payphone works fine. Sorry for the crappy Polaroid.)  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-08-2005 02:19 AM                        More sidesplitting pictures from insurance adjusters: When I got my driver's license, we only had to learn how to parallel park. I thought that was hard, but this new thing looks even more difficult. Dadgum neighbors! Their dog is always in our yard, their truck is always on our roof, I wish they would just move! This one was interesting. Usually the brick/masonry homes just got submerged, & the wood frame houses on brick piers floated off & broke up. In this case, the brick home, foundation & all, floated up, cruised four blocks down the street, taking out everything in its path, & finally when the water receded wound up half-in the road.  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 11-08-2005 06:13 PM                  Yeah, let's all laugh at these "sidesplitting pictures" of people that have lost everything.  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-09-2005 07:03 AM                        It's gallows humor, probably easy to misread from the outside. (In MS, where a guy who was living in his car was looking at his frame house which had floated a block north & the biggest chunk was in a parking lot) Me: Sheesh, what are you going to do? Guy: I think I like it better over here, so I may just leave it here. And turned like this too, you get the morning sun in the bedroom a little better.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 11-09-2005 07:25 AM                        quote: Phil Hill Yeah, let's all laugh at these "sidesplitting pictures" of people that have lost everything. I'd agree with that response if William's post had been written by someone who has not been personally affected by Katrina. But sometimes gallows humour can help those who have been affected by a tragedy or other form of big problem to deal with it; and in such circumstances I've got no problem sharing the joke. I once met a survivor from the Hindenburg. She recalled how a crew member who helped her out of the wreck discovered that, once they were well clear of the danger area, he realised that a packet of cigarettes in his jacket pocket had survived intact. 'Does anyone have a light?' he asked, with the burning wreck of the airship in the background. He died from his injuries a few hours later.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 11-09-2005 07:33 AM                     The PBX at my previous workplace was still Strowger until just before I left, at the end of 1989; but they weren't very common by that time. The thing was in a room behind our darkroom, and we used to go in and poke the things with a pen when they got jammed. The noise would drive you round the bend after a while when the 'phones were busy.  |  IP: Logged John Walsh Film God Posts: 2490 From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way Registered: Oct 1999 posted 11-09-2005 08:27 AM                     I worked on a Stromberg-Carlson XY system while in high school. Phil, you're right; here's another guy with a PBX in his basement! From "The Strowger Telecomms Page" "Almon B. Strowger was an undertaker in Kansas City, USA. The story goes that there was a competing undertaker locally whose wife was an operator at the local (manual) telephone exchange. Whenever a caller asked to be put through to Strowger, calls were deliberately put through to his competitor. This obviously frustrated Strowger greatly and he set about devising a system for doing away with the human part of the equation !"  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 11-09-2005 05:41 PM                     quote: Stephen Furley The noise would drive you round the bend after a while when the 'phones were busy. What was amazing was that the switchmen who worked in the SXS and XBar COs could hear a failure occur in amongst all the racket. Now all you hear in a CO is the noise of hundreds of cooling fans. Everything else is solid state.  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 11-09-2005 06:06 PM                  I grew up in the small town of Walled Lake Michigan. When I was 13 or so, I was sooo intrigued by the strange noises coming out of the tiny Strowger CO we had that I used to try to con my way into it just to listen and watch it all. The guys would remove a relay cover just so I could watch the mechanism in action...It was so cool. (Back then and at that age, I was so easily entertained!) My other favorite thing was to weasel my way into the local drive-in booth... Gawd! What fun in a more innocent time.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 11-09-2005 06:17 PM                     My mother used to work for "Ma Bell" in the mainframe area and I would just love to go there and watch rows and rows of these switchers do their thing-rattling and clattering away. Danged place was so noisy, you couldn't think half the time during peak hours. quote: Scott Norwood And people think I'm weird just because my living room phone is a WECO 1C2 payphone ..needs to be a rotary dial, black cased version to really have fun with.  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 11-09-2005 07:08 PM                  quote: Monte L Fullmer ...needs to be a rotary dial, black cased version to really have fun with. You mean like this? A pic of my "working with coins" WE 233 pay phone as installed in my old house. For years, whenever my parents visited me, they always put some coins into that phone to make a call... same as with all my pinball machines and other coin-op stuff in my rec room. I finally told them years later everything was set on "Free Play". Too funny! I have a phone collection...now packed for moving...that includes everything from a candlestick to the hanging handset 201. Someday, I'll get to unpack all the crap I have in boxes! The WE 201 on my workbench...  |  IP: Logged

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