You're right about the sounds, not just the selector sounds that you hear at the museum, but on crossbar doinf the testing, the machine would step through each combination in turn, a sort of 'chun..,,ka, chun..,,ka, chun..,,ka.., i could have used it as a beat for music.
Most of the people today don't know detailed manuals used to exist for electronics. I worked on IBM mainframes and minis and the manuals would have test procedures down to the level of a single component on a circuit board. Now the whole computer is just thrown away when one tiny component fails.
A fascinating read, it seems. Thanks for showing the collection. Indeed more than enough to keep a nerd occupied forever. All the detailed drawings - a thing of beauty!
I was a telecom tech for over 30 years. Mostly PBX's like ITT and Nortel. The Nortel PBX's came with "The Meridian Reference Library" or "MERL" as it was called. This was a set of notebooks that covered everything from installation, repair, programming, and even network routing. Once during a performance review, my supervisor asked one of the other techs what he did if he couldn't resolve a problem. His answer was to call me as I had memorized the entire MERL! Not a good answer for him but it was partially true. I taught myself network routing using the manuals as we had a number of PBX's in different cities all networked together using ISDN. The only mechanical switch I ever worked on was a small Stromberg Carlson XY switch. I completely rebuilt it and it was used for a number of years before it was replaced by an electronic switch.
You could tell the time of day from the sound of the racks, usually when " Our Tune " was on the Radio a lot of office, factory and domestic subscribers would take time out to listen so the traffic subsided for ten minutes, then when the segment finished at 11 o'clock the racks would suddenly ramp up the routing both in and out. I suspect many managers listened as well.
Gee the BPO must have been tight forcing their engineers to buy their own text books, In Australia Telecom provided all the engineering training publications free of charge, I have retired now after 40 years in the industry and have only just disposed of all my technical manuals,and only because I have moved to a smaller home and did not have the room.I have a model railway which is controlled by 3000 type relays. It’s nice to hear the clicking and clacking from underneath the layout.
As a mere grunt the GPO gave me armfuls of N diagrams of stuff I never encountered in the wild. Then came stuff with chips in -- so more training and more folders. The amount of paper used must have left several dogs looking for a tree to pee on 🙂
@@keithsquawk Yep. The ITT TE-400 PBX's literally came with a small filing cabinet full of drawings. The Nortel switches also had the manuals on CD-Rom as well as in notebooks. I still have a copy of that cd-rom set somewhere. Now they would probably make you download the documentation.
My experience as an apprentice in the early 80s was some of the engineers working in the exchanges could go a bit stir crazy as they were cooped up all day as opposed to those out on the road. They would come up with various schemes and pranks to help pass the time and sometimes show some eccentric behaviour. One story I was told was when a guy not happy with his lunch in the exchange staff canteen instead of filling in the complaints book put the dinner plate, complete with the offending lunch, in the book to show his displeasure.
wire a relay OK -- but have it ready to tip a box of paper chads the capacitor enhances it 🙂 (Never own up to it or you'll have to clean up the mess and make sure it's nowhere near the switchgear.)
We used to wire up a thermistor (red smarty) via jumper wire to the mains. Similar effect but a bigger bang!! Tee hee! GEC Telecomms 1972-78, Post Office/BT 1978-1993
in my short career on strowger in two buildings in central London, I have numerous tales, not all can be published. Starting gun strapped to the top of a rack.with jumper wire around the trigger, the jumper wire run to the other end of the floor , pull the wire and watch the person jump out of their skin. When the trigger action cleaning bottles came out, fill them with white spirit stat spraying and light the spray with a lighter, have a flame thrower fight in the exchange and set light to the rubbish in the air conditioning plant room. Regulary do pranks on the apprentice (me)
There will be a quiz tomorrow on chapters 1 to 100. All your reference material needs to be high resolution scaned. Along with detailed photos of your installation
Nice vid Mitch, I wish I had kept all my old books. The Stanley George book you gave me does describe the culture that existed. I'm looking forward to reading the Yarnfield Files as I spent a lot of time there back in the day. See you in November.
Thanks for posting. The GPO as was supplied the model makers of the UK with tons of kit as they changed the old gear out of the exchanges, The BA series of screws have been the mainstay of model engineering. Was any of the textbook work done by or influenced by the great T Flowers?
"Capture the sounds" -> Sample packs! "Capture the sights" -> Videos you can watch on your smartphone while you tour the exchange. For irony. "Capture the smells" -> Just burn a bunch of electrical tape, and an armful of hair.
if its a true 1960's recreation dont forget to add in the rich aroma of tobacco as smoking was allowed anywhere and thy even had special ashtrays attached to the frame.
Many years ago the local municipal library had copies of Telephony 1 and 2 on the shelves, I borrowed them. Can't remember if that was during the days of UAX12 satellite or central automatic. Never worked for GPO, but knew my way around commercial building network.
Anecdotes replacing cables run diagonally across a wall? phones in a mortuary? actual chefs in BT staff restaurants? 'meet the plebs day' where I had a board member sat next to me who said 'well, this is shit isn't it, cup ot tea?' after an hour ?
Does anyone happen to know when the dial tone changed from the rough buzzing to the more pleasant chord that we're all familiar with now? I was born in 1980 and though I didn't use the phone much as a kid, I never remember hearing the old dial tone.
You're right about the sounds, not just the selector sounds that you hear at the museum, but on crossbar doinf the testing, the machine would step through each combination in turn, a sort of 'chun..,,ka, chun..,,ka, chun..,,ka.., i could have used it as a beat for music.
More of this please! A book review series would be awesome.
Most of the people today don't know detailed manuals used to exist for electronics. I worked on IBM mainframes and minis and the manuals would have test procedures down to the level of a single component on a circuit board. Now the whole computer is just thrown away when one tiny component fails.
❤ this channel, as someone who used to read Haynes car manuals as bedtime reading understand the books value 😊
A fascinating read, it seems. Thanks for showing the collection. Indeed more than enough to keep a nerd occupied forever. All the detailed drawings - a thing of beauty!
I was a telecom tech for over 30 years. Mostly PBX's like ITT and Nortel. The Nortel PBX's came with "The Meridian Reference Library" or "MERL" as it was called. This was a set of notebooks that covered everything from installation, repair, programming, and even network routing.
Once during a performance review, my supervisor asked one of the other techs what he did if he couldn't resolve a problem. His answer was to call me as I had memorized the entire MERL! Not a good answer for him but it was partially true. I taught myself network routing using the manuals as we had a number of PBX's in different cities all networked together using ISDN.
The only mechanical switch I ever worked on was a small Stromberg Carlson XY switch. I completely rebuilt it and it was used for a number of years before it was replaced by an electronic switch.
You could tell the time of day from the sound of the racks, usually when " Our Tune " was on the Radio a lot of office, factory and domestic subscribers would take time out to listen so the traffic subsided for ten minutes, then when the segment finished at 11 o'clock the racks would suddenly ramp up the routing both in and out. I suspect many managers listened as well.
Definitely a subculture
Gee the BPO must have been tight forcing their engineers to buy their own text books, In Australia Telecom provided all the engineering training publications free of charge, I have retired now after 40 years in the industry and have only just disposed of all my technical manuals,and only because I have moved to a smaller home and did not have the room.I have a model railway which is controlled by 3000 type relays. It’s nice to hear the clicking and clacking from underneath the layout.
As a mere grunt the GPO gave me armfuls of N diagrams of stuff I never encountered in the wild. Then came stuff with chips in -- so more training and more folders.
The amount of paper used must have left several dogs looking for a tree to pee on 🙂
@@keithsquawk Yep. The ITT TE-400 PBX's literally came with a small filing cabinet full of drawings. The Nortel switches also had the manuals on CD-Rom as well as in notebooks. I still have a copy of that cd-rom set somewhere. Now they would probably make you download the documentation.
My experience as an apprentice in the early 80s was some of the engineers working in the exchanges could go a bit stir crazy as they were cooped up all day as opposed to those out on the road. They would come up with various schemes and pranks to help pass the time and sometimes show some eccentric behaviour.
One story I was told was when a guy not happy with his lunch in the exchange staff canteen instead of filling in the complaints book put the dinner plate, complete with the offending lunch, in the book to show his displeasure.
Directly wire a large capacitor in a small carboard box to the 50V .........BANG, good for making your colleagues jump.
wire a relay OK -- but have it ready to tip a box of paper chads
the capacitor enhances it 🙂
(Never own up to it or you'll have to clean up the mess and make sure it's nowhere near the switchgear.)
We used to wire up a thermistor (red smarty) via jumper wire to the mains. Similar effect but a bigger bang!! Tee hee! GEC Telecomms 1972-78, Post Office/BT 1978-1993
in my short career on strowger in two buildings in central London, I have numerous tales, not all can be published.
Starting gun strapped to the top of a rack.with jumper wire around the trigger, the jumper wire run to the other end of the floor , pull the wire and watch the person jump out of their skin.
When the trigger action cleaning bottles came out, fill them with white spirit stat spraying and light the spray with a lighter, have a flame thrower fight in the exchange and set light to the rubbish in the air conditioning plant room.
Regulary do pranks on the apprentice (me)
The hand written ones were my dads Lionel King, I dropped them in to the museum a while back.
Thank you again, they're amazing
@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE I should have had a bit more of a read of them first, that letter about pulling cables through ducts looked interesting 🙂
There will be a quiz tomorrow on chapters 1 to 100.
All your reference material needs to be high resolution scaned. Along with detailed photos of your installation
Nice vid Mitch, I wish I had kept all my old books. The Stanley George book you gave me does describe the culture that existed. I'm looking forward to reading the Yarnfield Files as I spent a lot of time there back in the day. See you in November.
Thanks for posting. The GPO as was supplied the model makers of the UK with tons of kit as they changed the old gear out of the exchanges, The BA series of screws have been the mainstay of model engineering.
Was any of the textbook work done by or influenced by the great T Flowers?
"Capture the sounds" -> Sample packs!
"Capture the sights" -> Videos you can watch on your smartphone while you tour the exchange. For irony.
"Capture the smells" -> Just burn a bunch of electrical tape, and an armful of hair.
almost - there's oil as wel
and hot dust -always hot dust
if its a true 1960's recreation dont forget to add in the rich aroma of tobacco as smoking was allowed anywhere and thy even had special ashtrays attached to the frame.
@@volvogamer Bakelite ashtrays for the plebs, metal ones for managers, glass ones for the top knobs -- all government issue.
Very cool
Many years ago the local municipal library had copies of Telephony 1 and 2 on the shelves, I borrowed them. Can't remember if that was during the days of UAX12 satellite or central automatic. Never worked for GPO, but knew my way around commercial building network.
Anecdotes
replacing cables run diagonally across a wall?
phones in a mortuary?
actual chefs in BT staff restaurants?
'meet the plebs day' where I had a board member sat next to me who said 'well, this is shit isn't it, cup ot tea?' after an hour ?
Does anyone happen to know when the dial tone changed from the rough buzzing to the more pleasant chord that we're all familiar with now? I was born in 1980 and though I didn't use the phone much as a kid, I never remember hearing the old dial tone.
I misread that title as "cooking the books", haha
I still enjoy my Atkinson vol 2! For real switching nerds I can recommend 100 Years of Telephone Switching by RJ Chapuis - volumes 1 & 2!
Why do all phone closets smell the same? I assumed it was cable lube or something.
Wrong fuse?
🫶🏻