There's somewhat of an anachronism in those videos: The video is showing fairly new "cross bar" switching system hardware which I recall didn't appear 'til the '50s or so.
Shortly after WWII, the telephone central offices were using Strowger switches ( or "step-by-step" switches with Line_finders, Selectors and Connectors ( all 2 dimensional matrix relays ).) P.S. I have quite a hacker background in this field. Ironically, I've worked in the central office field as a contract engineer for about three years ( but now I'm into Steorn's free energy devices (which seem to work, from my experiments ), avionics design, and personal helicopters ), but before that, look up my infamous reputation as a hacker in the Ithaca Journal, Feb. 17, 1964. Therein is a picture of my seven Wien bridge oscillator blue box built before that sort of thing was popularized by "Captain Crunch" ( they wouldn't give it back to me :-( ). P.S.2 AG Communication Systems here in Phoenix where I was a contract engineer for two years ( Part of Lucent now ), who makes telephone class 5 central office equipment actually had their talented employees produce a musical": "Strowger", the musical" ! ( Strowger was a funeral director who thought of how to automate telephone switching, as I recall ). Unfortunatly, political considerations severely restricts what telecoms can do as far as innovation. They still require support for old pulse dialing phones and insanely complicated disparate regional laws about what kinds of accesses can be allowed from each juridiction (It wouldn't surprise me if "crank phones" still had to be supported ), such things as whether "caller ID" is legal in e.g. "Murdo, South Dakota" influences the design of "line cards", the hardware that connects to the incoming twisted pairs. It's a nightmare for creative engineers, and I'm staying away from that beauracracy now. Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona, US http://HoytStearns.com -----Original Message----- From: Terry Blanton [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 2:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:Need to reach Jeff Kooistra On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > But they still had some difficulty understanding the concept > of dialing, what was waiting for the dial tone and pushing the dial all way > around to generate the correct number of dial pulses. Did you know that you can still pulse dial with the hookswitch? You have to be consistent and fast but it can be done. Easier than Morse code. Terry
