instaBlaster...

Photos at stepswitch.us

@Richard Conte I believe they have a 1ESS

I'm involved with both.

Did you work in the Southern California area?

Yes in a busy exchange of 1000's of line your ear would tune out all the normal sounds but pickup a switch going wrong 1/2 the exchange away! (or someone trying to "tap" a public phone for a free call)

No

I worked in an exchange like this at Ft. Benning and I know exactly what you mean. You don’t hear them unless they aren’t right.

There was extra equipment outside the normal channels called "service observing equipment." The operators could access that and cut in or listen in. Worked good for law enforcement wiretaps, too, sometimes, I guess.

Just an addendum that was actually at 100 line exchange the we had a 300 line at the transmitter site and 800 at the main Base

I can remember when the power house we go down and every phone in the place would be picked up and all my finder's all wood pop to the top and my battery discharge went into overdrive

Michigan bell?? Being born in the late 80s, is there any possibility I interacted with anything other than ESS systems when I was a kid? Any idea when COs in MI were modernized? Thanks!

Some independent phone companies might have still used some mechanical switches but Michigan Bell was pretty much all ESS or digital by the early 1990s.

ds99, I just read you post. I was a pbx operator at my high school, then the local Hospital and then the Army overseas. When I came home I started working at AT&T as an operator. I didn't get to work on the old cord switchboard as it had just been taken out of service and new TSPS consoles were the newest technology. You mentioned the operator checking the line for conversation. When I became a supervisor after 4 years of being an operator I was lucky to get to work on a large cord switchboard in Oklahoma City. The service you are talking about was called Verification. When a customer dialed 0 and ask to check for trouble when the new system was installed, that operator would connect you to the verification operator on the cord switchboard by dialing a special number. That would light up a signal on a red/white strip on the cord switchboard and you waited for the first available verification operator to pick up your call. After you gave them the number to check, the operator plugged into special jacks/connections to verification equipment for that exchange and keyed that number. The equipment would cut into the line so that the operator could hear if it was conversation or in trouble. IF you declared an Emergency, we took your name and number, cut back in and excused ourselves and explained we had an emergency request and who it was from. If they agreed, we gave them your number. After TSPS was a few years older they developed a way that the dial 0 operator could press a button to verify the number. You probably couldn't tell the operator had connected if you were the one on the phone, and the operator could not make out what was being said, but could tell if it was off hook, in conversation or trouble. Along with this service being available at the TSPS console also made billing you for emergency interuptions as easy as pushing a button. I also don't understand exactly how the mechanical switch could tell what your number was, we would get a display with your number once we got to the new TSPS system. As the old equipment was removed and new electronic switches installed of course it became easy to identify the number. Rural areas had older equipment for a longer time, and when they dialed long distance with 1 + it came into the console with a light that read CAMA. We then ask you for your number and entered it. The bad part of that was if I made a mistake, or you gave someone else's number it would be billed wrong. We later even began to do overseas calls without the help of a special overseas operator. Of course a few years later cell phones started to become common and the Bell System was broken into regional companies and the good quality service via land line telephones started a downward spin and now days you have no operator that really knows anything or will help place a call.

Me to! Today it's all digital barely moving parts. Which is no fun for us.

$110 per month.

Figured out my problem, the dial tone number is the number into the switch, but the network does not relay the pulses from my rotary phone to the switch, so I guess I must use a tone phone. How Ironic not being able to use a rotary phone on a SxS switch. Anyways thank you so much, Sxsphil for preserving this wonderful lost technology!!

I believe that siren takes the place of the "The number you have dialed" recordings. Playing around on the dial in line with random numbers gives that siren.

call 971-239-5084 leave msg.

its in the movie. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h75_jd1z3L6rg2Q.html

You can rebuild it. At the Dial Central Office Repairman school at Ft. Monmouth in 1966, we took ‘em apart and put ‘em back together. The mechanical parts and the relays. I worked in exchanges of this type at Ft. Benning, which is now Ft.Moore. Of course, in the Army way, they sent me to a 19 week school to learn this stuff, but at Benning the exchanges were run by civilian employees. My job was to cut the grass. But by begging I got to work on equipment sometimes and ended up being the night guy where I could fix whatever I wanted. Then I got shipped to Germany, where I never got to hold a screwdriver. The equipment was Siemens and the civilian employees were German. Strange unit. One officer, about 25 GIs, and 75 German civilians.

No Just have numbers from them.

Those type siren controls used a “dry loop” (meaning that the telco only supplied the wire, no equipment) circuit. A voltage source, usually at the FD, was fed thru the relay, to a telco supplied wire pair, that went to the telco office, was cross connected on the main frame, to another pair out to the siren location. They were also called “alarm loops” as that was the most often use for dry pairs. Businesses alarms were connected thru the telco to the monitor location. Also the base radio was often remote controlled over a dry pair.

@@stevepark5504 Ok gotcha!

This is a big problem I will be at the end of my working life (job) In about 6 to 7 years. When I retire I plan on moving to a smaller property and I do not want to take any of this with me from what I see of other collections there is a little interest in large scale collections due to the extreme cost of moving them. When I started this over 30 years ago this was a Toy for me and I bought it as scrap and probably will end up scrapping the switching equipment, do to little interest from phone-collectors.

@@sxsphil Is the Seattle Telco museum an option?

No. They have no space for much of anything. I’ve donated a few small items to them.

@@sxsphil i would buy the lot from you this should be preserved and i would love to take care of it

Phil, don’t scrap it. There are still some of us out here young enough and very interested. I know that many of the long-time collectors are fading, or aren’t switchers, but some of us are learning and enthusiastic, wishing it weren’t so difficult to find equipment.