Old guy test.

[tous]

I do, too.

Those that engineered public switched telephone systems in the first half of the 20th century were incredible engineers.

 

[ChuteTheMall]

I remember our party line in the late 1950's, and our 6 digit phone number was 62-8191. 

I don't remember any current phone numbers other than my own.

[Hook]

7 hours ago, Borg warner said:

Nope.  Not dinosaurs, cave men. I'm speaking for those of us who grew up in the previous century when people were not tied to an electronic leash everywhere they went. It was a time of nuts and bolts when everything was mechanical and not electronic, and the only thing that went beep was not your "Device", but the horns on foreign cars. It was a time where men were men and women were glad of it.

I was just kidding around Borg. I don’t even have a cell phone anymore more. Got rid of it cause I think they are one of the most annoying things ever invented. I was born in 69. I still remember being 12 years old loading brush into a trailer to make money for things I wanted after my dad told me if you want stuff you have to be willing to work for it. I use a iPad now and don’t even care for it. I truly think it’s sad how many people rely on a cellphone for everything.  People can’t add or subtract without one. My mom is 82 years old and can still do one helluva a job adding and subtracting with just her brain. I tell her use your phones calculator but she says no I would rather use my brain power. Don’t take everything so seriously. Not trying to be rude.  Jesu I can’t even type on this stupid fuck8n thing. 

[miketx]

11 hours ago, Hook said:

What the hell are you guys dinosaurs? 🤣🤣

Even worse.  Igneous rock.

[railfancwb]

6 hours ago, ChuteTheMall said:

I remember our party line in the late 1950's, and our 6 digit phone number was 62-8191. 

I don't remember any current phone numbers other than my own.

 

[gwalchmai]

Say what you will, but I remember returning one of those Bell handsets to the local office. It had not survived a party. The stout metal base was folded into a "U" and the plastic housing was cracked a little. The lady at the desk exchanged it for a new one, smiled, and said "Thank you very much. Have a nice day." 

My dad was a Southern Bell repairman when I was little. He said that Mondays were fun listening to folks making up stories about what had happened to their phones. 

[DAKA]

11 hours ago, ChuteTheMall said:

I remember our party line in the late 1950's, and our 6 digit phone number was 62-8191. 

I don't remember any current phone numbers other than my own.

Mr Vidle...........   Whoe can forget Lilly Tomlin's "operator"

[minervadoe]

I remember that we had a party line for a short period of time.  It was weird to pick up the phone and be able to listen in to some other family's conversation. 

[ChuteTheMall]

2 hours ago, minervadoe said:

I remember that we had a party line for a short period of time.  It was weird to pick up the phone and be able to listen in to some other family's conversation. 

It was also a good reminder to never say anything on the phone that you wouldn't want overheard.

[Borg warner]

12 hours ago, Hook said:

I was just kidding around Borg. I don’t even have a cell phone anymore more. Got rid of it cause I think they are one of the most annoying things ever invented. I was born in 69. I still remember being 12 years old loading brush into a trailer to make money for things I wanted after my dad told me if you want stuff you have to be willing to work for it. I use a iPad now and don’t even care for it. I truly think it’s sad how many people rely on a cellphone for everything.  People can’t add or subtract without one. My mom is 82 years old and can still do one helluva a job adding and subtracting with just her brain. I tell her use your phones calculator but she says no I would rather use my brain power. Don’t take everything so seriously. Not trying to be rude.  Jesu I can’t even type on this stupid fuck8n thing. 

I didn't think you were being rude. I just tend to get on my soapbox from time to time and comment on the way of the world and these days it's hard to take anything seriously.

[pipedreams]

18 hours ago, janice6 said:

They detected the ringer.

That's why you disconnected the ringer if you were smart, very easy to do.

[pipedreams]

18 hours ago, janice6 said:

Telephone relays would advance one set of contacts with each click.  Banks of these relays would choose the lines to connect you to your number.

 

That would advance this:

The dial contacts were usually bifurcated for more reliability.  Catalina Island was one of the last places to get rid of the step by step switch system, but that been many years ago now.

[minervadoe]

1 hour ago, ChuteTheMall said:

It was also a good reminder to never say anything on the phone that you wouldn't want overheard.

I think that still stands today. 

[DWARREN123]

Remember when they came out with phones in colors other than black? It was a big thing to have one.

[DAKA]

5 hours ago, DWARREN123 said:

Remember when they came out with phones in colors other than black? It was a big thing to have one.

Then came all the others   Princess   anyone   I think I still have a rotary Princess phone somewhere

[railfancwb]

21 minutes ago, DAKA said:

Then came all the others   Princess   anyone   I think I still have a rotary Princess phone somewhere

Think anything other than basic black in the standard design carried an extra monthly cost - forever. 

[railfancwb]

I wonder if newly built spec houses are pre-wired for multiple land line connections nowadays 

For awhile, and maybe still, a few hundred yards of my street had no land line on the utility poles. AT&T coming from the east ended at one pole. Further down the road United Telephone ended at another pole, coming from the west. 

[Peng]

I dimly remember something about Tuxedo something or the other.

[janice6]

On 5/31/2022 at 5:48 AM, DAKA said:

Then came all the others   Princess   anyone   I think I still have a rotary Princess phone somewhere

My company was hell bent on supplying Fiber Optic Interfaces to the Military.  Specifically, to the Navy for use in Tactical aircraft.

One day my company sent me out East to a conference set up by the land line phone companies.  They were pleading for fiber optic replacement for twisted pair land line telephone connections.

They argued that 80 percent of their total operating cost was in poor connections of the twisted pair, both in the distribution lines and in the lines to the home.  They argued that if they could get rid of that poor electrical connection problem their income and their service could be immeasurably improved for the customer. by increasing the reliability of the service.  They begged those of us in companies large enough to spend significant monies on fiber interconnects, to invent a means to make a cheap reliable field splice procedure that any moderately trained person could perform.

Of course, the answer was that there are two different fiber interconnects.  For a fiber to the home interconnect, the joint could be a fusion joint where the two or three fibers could be melted together to make a joint.  In practice this was a "multimode" fiber application and "relatively" easy to accomplish  because the fiber was so large in diameter.  In practice, it required precise alignment of two optical glass fibers hundreds of microns in diameter.  This is a large number in fiber optics but very small in mechanical terms.  So it still required some special fixturing and special training to do well.

However, in distribution lines where greater bandwidth was necessitated by many users, many gigahertz, the greater bandwidth was accomplished by "Single Mode" optical fiber.  This is an optical fiber requiring alignment to within a fraction of a micron.  Now you are talking space age technology and very extensive training with very expensive components.

Making a plug and receptacle connection required precision of alignment in fractions of a micron and consistency of that alignment after repeated insertions.  Repeated insertions meant wear and no wear was acceptable or the alignment was bad and no use to the service.

Alignment of Single Mode "Plug" and receptacle necessitated precision machined high carbon steel for minimum wear and temperature stability.  Even then you had to insert the micron diameter fiber into the connector and align it with the other fiber with unbelievable precision.  When I was doing this each single connector costs many hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars due to the materials and precision machining.

So the answer to their problem was that single mode optical fiber could be used for trunk lines and distribution lines, where there were a very large number of users and the costs of the precision hardware could be amortized over many, many, users.  the phone company has so many users over trunk and distribution lines that no matter the cost it's still economical.

This is what is done today.  However, "Fiber to the home" was so costly that its use was prohibited, since the home owner would have to pay thousands of dollars for the connection per user.  Thus, it was still cheaper to convert from optical fiber distribution lines into electrical wire to the home.

Even now, the use of optical fiber as an interface on a tactical military platform is so expensive as to be prohibitive for most applications.  One of the cost factors for tactical weapon systems was the ability to restring the optical fiber on a damaged tactical platform during war conditions. 

Optical fiber must be secured so it doesn't vibrate because this causes leakage of the laser light in the fiber and degradation of the signal to noise ratio for reliable communications. This meant that to use fiber in a tactical application you had to run the fiber through some kind of conduit for ease of replacement in the field.  The solution for inexpensive replacement of the fiber under field conditions was to blow the fiber through the conduit and make the necessary interconnects at junction points.  Again requiring reasonable special training and equipment.

The advantage of optical fiber is in the signal bandwidth capabilities.  A single mode optical fiber had bandwidths in many gigahertz, versus maybe one gigahertz for a wire.  So fiber offered far more performance capabilities than wire.

Another advantage of single mode optical fiber is that the multiple gigahertz bandwidth was avail in each different "color" of laser light launched down the same fiber.  Many different "color lasers", or different wavelength lasers, could be launched down the same fiber without causing interfering with each other.

Therefore, to upgrade the performance of an optical fiber system, you simply added more different wavelength (color) lasers and you increased your performance by orders of magnitude.

God it's expensive!

[Huaco Kid]

On 5/29/2022 at 9:07 PM, railfancwb said:

Ever hook it up to your nipples?

Do it.

[Huaco Kid]

Pennsylvania 6-5000?

[Huaco Kid]

I don't even know my wife's phone number.

But I remember my girlfriend's number from high school.

[aomagrat]

HAzel 76964 on a black solid metal, including the receiver, phone that weighed almost as much as me, on a purpose made stand with a built-in seat and shelf for the phone book.

[Maser]

I remember when cell phones were actually used to make phone calls. 

 

[Batesmotel]

Telephone chair or “gossip bench”