Believe it or not: London Underground are *still* using Mercury arc rectifiers to provide DC current! 🚇⚡😳 ...And we British think we're _Levelling Up?!?!?_ 🏛🇬🇧🤣

We still had some of those here and working in the 90’s for the FAA. The place clicked all the time, you might recall.

@@pdbruce I don't know about clicking because I was only dumpster diving and looking into the windows, but one of the guys who worked there told me that he had to clean one step-by-step relay per day. That's a LOT of contacts to clean! No patience for that ;o)

I used to see Bellcos sell or donate retired equipment to countries in South America. No idea if they still do that. There should be plenty of spare parts to keep things going considering the volume of equipment removed versus actually re-used.

The Connections Museum? Great place, well worth a trip.

Send a few over 'ere, will ya? We've still got some exchanges on SxS! 🏛🇬🇧🤣

I want those batteries! 😍 Move over Mr. Musk with your UKCA 🔥 intertia-killing Li-Poo batteries...Pack a car with a load of these, and absolutely *nothing* is stopping you once you're above 40mph... 💥🐘💨😉

Always will, some places tried to used VRLA or AGM (still lead acid)style like in the cell sites but they don't last the way they're used in Central offices. They only significantly discharge if the generators die. Otherwise they just keep the load supplied while the generators spool up. Pretty much every other chemistry wouldn't have many Ampere Hours after being treated like that for years. These tank cells can sit there for 50 years easy. 25 years after this style of battery(the round type though) were deployed, a study was done, 14,000 batteries (cells actually) were tested and inspected. None of them leaked, only .01% failed and the rest kept 80% of their capacity, which was a predicted number for 25 years in service. There are new chemistry batteries, sure, but for this role, these are better than anything else.

You haven't seen the _English Electric_ logos on half of the step-down transformers we've *still* got in service around these parts... ⚡🇬🇧😉

Probably not, tbh: Openreach/BT are forcing all lines over to IP here by the end of 2025, several EU countries are now IP only, and the only way to get POTS on your phone line is to inherit (i.e: Move into a house with) a phone line that's still POTS. ☎ The thing is: IP is a _lot_ cheaper for carriers/networks to provision...So even in countries like the US where the right of choice is always there (Unlike us 🇬🇧 where they just force us over whether we like it or not) as soon as you're one of the last few on the POTs equipment, your phone bill is going so high even ransoming off Charles IIIrd won't pay for _all_ of it... 💸

I don't know how much of it is still out there, but pretty much any T1 over the last 20+ years was an HDSL circuit. (HDSL2 for the last one I had about a decade ago.)

Not sure about attacks, but I was surprised at the glass door too. Never seen a CO with a glass door!

😂 I worked in a CO very much like this for 16 years. I knew what every piece of hardware was for and I can say that any NSA equipment exists at a much more centralized location.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

It's behind the twitching curtains at your neighbours house... 👀💨😉 Oh, sorry...That's *our* approach to it, isn't it? 🕵🇬🇧🙃

WAS good. Gone now, merged into Avaya years ago. Sad, they had great products.

Almost no one has those anymore. Most of that stuff moved to "winmodems" two decades ago. (done in "software" on dense DSPs. DS3 worth of voice into a 2U box.) The last things I've seen still using dialup... gas pump credit card terminals. (and they mostly use cellular now)

Internet dial up modems belonged to the internet provider. We just dialled the number.

No, he videoed during a tour, said it at the beginning.