This Channel has videos of my Hobby central office switches. I Have a 600 Line Western Electric SXS, 200 Line Stromberg Carlson X-Y, 400 Line WE #3 Crossbar switch, 200 Line Automatic Electric SXS, 200 Line Itec Ems 1 and 2, also 80 Line North Electric C-X 100 and toll equipment such as switchboards and carrier equipment. I also have a Facebook site. facebook.com/groups/227287585005796/ 1A1 / 1A2 Key systems and phones I do provide tours upon request. call 971-239-5084 Leave msg. You can support my channel at Patreon www.patreon.com/user?u=65542787
This is a great collection! Although, I’m never gonna collect Stromberg sets due to them being lower quality. I also don’t like the extremely vibrant neon colors such as the bright line greens.
Phil, it's nice to see you making new videos. Visiting you and seeing all this was still one of the most awesome experiences ever! For those watching if you think this looks amazing in a short video I can tell you it's almost indescribable in person! Shawn
Phil... awesome video. I think given the chance, I could browse through this building for hours just looking and listening and absorbing it all. I'm amazed at the amount of thought, time, and effort you've put into this magnificent collection of telephone history. Thanks so much for the video and sharing your vast knowledge with us. I have a small 1A2 collection, always looking for more goodies to add, but you have a collection that's the envy of any collector!
Remember back in the 60’s when someone could dial their home phone number then hang up the phone would ring the two people that were there would pick up and talk to each other. How did that work?
Excellent video. Thank you. This brings back so many memories of my bell system career. I worked as a switchman in 355a SxS with ani-c. Then worked no.1 SxS with Cama, ani-b, with class 4 and5 which included switchboards, intertoll and toll-completing step selectors. It was in Eldon Missouri at Southwestern Bell. Such a interesting job and fulfilling. Again thank you. Wished I could see your installation in person, but age has crept up on my bones.
This is amazing!! I can’t imagine the amount of time, work and cost of collecting and assembling an exchange ! This is what I’d call “a labor of love.”
Wow! What a walk down memory lane. I spent 22 years in the key system and PBX group from 1980 until 2002 and the next 16 and a half in the C.O. This was with SWBT/AT&T. I installed and worked on so many of those systems. The first three years I was an operator and worked on a 3CL toll switchboard. I’d never seen a picture that so closely matched the one I worked on. It even had the same type clock! My hat is off to you sir, what a labor of love. Thanks so much for sharing what you do. I’ve seen several of your videos and I’ve enjoyed them all.
What is the easiest way to make a telephone ringer work with an outside power source? I've attempted using a variac at 70-90 volts at 60hz and get no ring. I understand some ringers will work at 60hz, and some will not.
My grandfather worked for bell Atlantic, Ingot his old tools. Wondering how a wire wrapper was used led me here. I imagine this is exactly what he was doing.
The weird thing was I had never been in an office when the interrupted wasn't running I was in a 100 line office in Columbus, KY, and the interrupted stopped. The reason no one was off hook.
I’m atually learning quite a bit about border phones, northern electric, western electric, and automatic electric small Payphone operators in the southern Lake Huron area (Canada/us)… lol…
I need help! I have a bell system WE rotary phone. When I removed the finger plate wheel(to clean underneath), it moved the base. So now the finger plate wheel is misaligned and is covering the 6 and 7. Can you make a video on how to realign the finger plate/dial?
On older Aiphone intercoms the call tone was generated by a reed inside the intercom station- the act of lifting the handset off of the hook struck this reed.
I remember 1A2 phones from when I was a kid...Builders' Square (remember them?) and Kmart used them well into the early 1990s and I remember the sound of the buzzer in them very well.
A retired telephone office maintenance man told me the highest use on a single day by a office with mechanical switching was the day Elvis died. They actually ran out of circuits for several hours.
Having worked at my RBOC for 10 years before, I was curious to know what was becoming of the copper switching network with the sunset of POTS services...
They built things to last back then. They didn't believe in just barely using just enough material to make it work like today. Engineered in a time when you had to use your brain.
So is this how multiple phones on a party line could be run differently by the psychology?? When I was a kid, somehow, I obtained a catalogue of subscriber station equipment, and how to order it and I remember seeing you ordered the cycling of the ringer. I never really knew but guess this is how different phones on the same party line were wrong. Now all this time later, I see this demo this is awesome. This explain something I have a had a curiosity about since the 1960s when I first saw this catalogue thank you so much for doing all this work and posting this and making the video.
As I watch this video, I'm reminded of the robustness & reliabilty of the old gear. My EAX Switch at work has been downsized by 75%, thanks in-part, to the new fiber-to-the-home getting installed in our area. I worry my days in the C.O. are surely numbered, & retirement is just out of reach.
Electro mechanical stuff is so neat, Thank You so much for the demonstration. This does remind me of a Mallory vibrator used for converting battery voltage to pulsating DC run it through a transformer to get a higher voltage then converted to DC for tube equipment.
Thank you so much! I was wondering why my model 500 wouldn't ring and was betting on that ground wire but I wasn't sure what to do with it. You saved me! You're the greatest!
Hey, thank you very much for passing on your knowledge and for your willingness to thoroughly explain the process, even if it is the simplest. I had a question: when you said that if I had a second line, I could move the ringer lead over to line 2 tip and ring. Does this configuration allow me to answer the two lines separately when selecting the corresponding buttons? If the answer is yes, what happens to line 1, once I removed the ringer lead from it to put it on line 2? I have the WE 565 and two lines that I would like to use on this device. Thanx!
If I understand your question, moving the ringer wires means you will not have any way of knowing if you are receiving a call on line 1. Without the 1A2 ksu there is no hold or lamps. You have a single line phone with a line selector.
