Close, but no cigar. Tip and Ring are the parts of one of those 1/4 inch phone plugs they used. The plug is divided into two parts with an insulator separating them. There is the tip at the end, and the shaft portion is the "ring"
-snip-
50's!? In 1972 I went to work for a small independent telco in upstate NY. [Middleburg Tel] They had just purchased an even smaller independent- the Summit Telephone Co. Those folks had 20 party lines on that great old bare wire stuff.Joe, the owner was more inventor than type a personality, so he often just "made things work" any which way he could. One of our favorites was a stretch where he just hooked into an electric fence when his lines went down. The phone worked- but I couldn't say if the electric fence was still hot.
Yeah, but there was an upside. When you called someone local the operator could tell you when they left, and maybe where they were headed. And when they got home and made a call she'd fill them in on who had called.
Jim
Actually the plug is divided into 3 parts. The shaft is the "sleeve". The "ring" is a ring between the tip and the shaft.
"Sleeve" is a 3rd wire used in the central office to determine if the line is busy. In the switchboard days, the operator could touch the tip of a patch cord to the shaft part of a jack and if they heard a click in their earphone the line was busy. On some boards it could light an adjacent bulb. "Sleeve" continued into the mechanical switching equipment, and there must be a digital equivalent in modern electronic switches.
I'm told Western Electric manufactured the jacks at one plant and the mating plugs in another. This discouraged employees from taking home samples. I miss Ma Bell.
You are correct. I garbled my explanation. Thanks for catching it.
Aw, shucks. It's that newfangled stuff where they provide phone service on TWO wires, of all things. You don't have to SREAM to be heard on 'em.
One need only ground one side of a modern, working (POTS) pair and it is obvious why, in the days you describe, it was a requirement to virtually SHOUT to be heard over the ground noise.
When they added the return conductor creating a balanced pair - the "loop" - the line wss quieted to an amazing degree.
I believe that, in most populated areas, PAIR service was introduced around 1910.
Yes.
However, local Operator service you describe was in place long before the "pair" was introduced.
In smaller, local exchanges, the switchboard was often located in the parlor of a local resident's home.
The Operator, usually the lady of the house, would go about her business in the home, stopping to connect calls when they rang in.
She would dry her hands, proceed to the switchboard, don the "chestset" (large horn-shaped transmitter hung from the neck that rested on the sternum into which the Operator spoke) (not yet headset), and answer the call, "Number please!".
Generally, the Operator went to bed at 9:00 or 10:00 PM Sunday through Thursday and stayed up an hour to two longer on Friday and Saturday night.
Outside those hours, one dare not ring-up the Operator unless there was a true emergency, a baby was born, or someone had died.
The Bell System break-up, the "Divestiture", occurred on January 1, 1984.
The first, official Standard Network Interface Devices (SNI/D) began appearing some months thereafter.
Protectors (not SNI/D) had been often mounted on the outside of the home for 10-20 years before that. During that period, it depended on the whim of the installer as to whether the protector was located inside or outside the premise. Those installed in the winter months were usually located indoors.
It's true. I have one hanging from an old, rotary butt set mere inches from me as I type. Antique mementos, and all that, ya know...
Ah, you've been around it would seem.
I was one of Omaha's first MALE long distance (toll) Operators. I started my career on the old, black WE cordboard (Toll I) that operated
24/7.Those were the early days of toll-free Directory Assistance NPA+555-1212.
Calls for my NPA (402) came into a single strip (24 jacks?) that multipled across perhaps 6-8 positions.
The system was new enough that an ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) delivered the calls to the jack strip, "falling" into the first (from the left) idle jack.
By touching the outer "sleeve" of each jack with no supervision (dark lamp), I could tell which jack was idle and would be the first to receive in incoming call. This provided much amusement to the chagrin of the old woman Operator seated nearby - that had been doing it for YEARS, taking MUCH pride in her speed and being the first to grab a new signal - when I began beating her to most calls! She'd been plugging-away for years and this young pup upstart was beating her time! Still, we became good friends.
I loved the old toll board. I personally handled a call from my brother, visiting my home, Sonny Bono, Ed McMahon and a person-to-person call to President Nixon. The President "wasn't in" so the drunk caller said to forget it. The MarkSense ticket went straight to the Service Assistant and, I presume, to the Secret Service. Ah, the good, old days...
I always found it strange that death was treated as an emergency, as if the deceased isn't going to be dead very long.
"Dad died last night but the doctor was slow getting here, so dad came back to life." :-)
Caller ... I think he is dead
911 operator ... First let's be surer he is really deadCaller (sound of gunshot) Yep he's dead.
snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Reminds me of Monty Python's - Bring out your dead. Still bring me a good chuckle. Not quite like when I first saw it and my face hurt from laughing so much. We had a different Purple Pill back then...
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