An Undertaker Invented This Automatic Telephone Exchange?! - Telephone Tuesdays

Today on Telephone Tuesday @hackmodular talks Almon Brown Strowger!
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We made a sample pack of lots of telephone exchange noises for you to use in your avant-garde ambient masterpieces.:-
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#vintage #telephoneexchange #restoration #telephony #telephonetuesdays #tonedarms

[@JosiahGould]

I think getting with some amateur radio guys and setting up a phone patch would be a great addition. Bonus if anyone has any ancient bag-style mobile phones that have been reprogrammed to make the calls.

[@loopinnerthe]

Mitch your storytelling skills are unrivaled. You could tell me that Mr Strowger was an 1880's cattle rustler that got tired of yelling out for more beans from the warmth of the camp fire and invented telephony so he could ring in his oder, or that he was an 1980s yuppie that got fed up with carrying a heavy brick phone about and and invented the much more reliable landline. Anything and I would believe you. I love telephone Tuesdays.

[@gwesco]

I started working for a large hospital in 1975. They had a sxs system owned by the local telco. In 1975 they contracted to have an ITT 400G electronic PBX installed. I got sent to the factory to learn how to work on it. In 1984, we had outgrown it and had a Nortel SL-1 N installed which was one of the first digital switches. I attended a number of Nortel factory training sessions to maintain it and eventually it was upgraded to an opt 81C just short of VoIP. When I retired, I ended up teaching CIS classes at the local college and we created a VoIP class. I taught that for a number of years so I can say that I went from mechanical switching to VoIP in 20 years. I love this stuff!

[@sparkyprojects]

Abingdon exchange was the last exchange in England to go automatic in 1975, which is where i worked on installation and testing. i even got a first day cover celebrating the fact ;)

[@davidyates748]

I caused chaos at my school by showing the other kids how to evade the payment mechanism on the payphone on the 6th form by 'flashing the hook'. People went crazy, phoning random people in Australia to ask them the time. The phone bill was astronomical as you can probably imagine. 40 years on it seems childish but it was real funny at the time. Fortunately they never realised who the instigator was else my education would have reached a premature end!

[@traumgeist]

Moral of story: Always make career changes based on spite.

[@chris_wicksteed]

The first thought I had was put different effects on different phone lines (e.g. hosepipe delay, spring reverb, vocoder, etc), so you can literally dial-up an effect to be added to your voice when you speak/sing through the receiver.

[@CKT1138]

Undertaking your calls

[@dvone4124]

Now consider what may be a bigger insight: the idea that a human can talk to a machine and a machine can reply back. Examples: The dial tone says the machine has done an internal check and is ready to make connections. The dialing sequence that identifies who you are calling. The ringback sound that says the human on the other end is being notified. The busy and fast busy that say please try again later. All things that had once required speaking to Mabel the Operator, now happening by direct human-machine conversation! You couldn't ask a tractor to drive itself to the south forty, yet something quite similar was now an everyday fact in homes and businesses worldwide.

[@recurvestickerdragon]

instant subscribe Y'all are not only passionate and friendly, but the dedication you put into all of this is wonderful, especially without selling out

[@danb659]

Here in New Zealand our exchanges worked differently and as a result the numbers were the opposite way around on rotary phones. If you wanted to dial by tapping you had to do the opposite number of pulses to the number you wanted. A 9 was 1 pulse, an 8 was 2 pulses..... a 1 was 9 pulses but a 0 was still 10 pulses.

[@MultiVogon]

You need to find a way to link your exchange to the one at the Internal Fire museum in Ceredigion - random calls between both museums would be great fun 😀

[@mezwickery]

Great video Mitch. Lovely to see the call out to how this systems were exploited. Not sure whether the phreaking scene was a thing here in the UK - because we never had the long distance thing getting in the way of the consumers of these systems, but it would be cool to see how the strowgers and these systems were massively exploited. It wasn't cost that saw them be replaced. I love telephone Tuesdays and The museum. Keep up the good work.

[@EclipseAtDusk]

Man was so pissed about his business being stolen he made the culprit’s entire field of work obsolete

[@U014B]

He is the embodiment of "Imma bout to end this man's whole career".

[@steveurbach3093]

I remember our town changing from Operator connected to Dial. BOonton 8 to DEerfield 4 when I was in the 1st grade. The Bell system brought (switchboard Style) Dials to class, so we could learn proper dialing and go home and teach our parents. BTW We pronounce it Str OH ger at the CO I worked as a frameman

[@curtishoffmann6956]

Sam's car! Hook up Sam's theremin car to the exchange!

[@madmodders]

Fun fact: Our rotary dials starts with zero and ends in nine, so zero is one pulse, and nine is ten pulses. So if you wanted to dial with the hook, you had to add one to the number you wanted to dial. :)

[@chrisprobert6]

If u reckon that's fun.... Good luck mush👍

[@gcewing]

In NZ the dial started with 0 as well, but going in the opposite direction: 0 = 10 pulses, 1 = 9 pulses, ..., 9 = 1 pulse.

[@msueag]

Have I missed other "See You Next Tuesday" outros? You rude man! haha

[@IvanStepaniuk]

The call I've been waiting for! Amazing stuff

[@AndrewAHayes]

I loved told call boxes in the UK of the '80s, I could make free calls from them and it saved me quite a bit of my pocket money as a kid.

[@richards7909]

This was on an episode of the Lateral podcast with Tom Scott too! :)

[@jackiesmith-vb5gw]

yes! i did the 'ol tapping bit on the phones when my mother put the dial lock on it. weird! i was paying for it!

[@Bills200]

Great video 👍 I had read strowger worked in Kansas but great video and great to see

[@padders1068]

Thanks Mitch for a cool history lesson! 🙂😎🤓

[@davidholman2536]

A teleprinter? Other Strowger exchanges like the ones at the Weald and Downland. Museum in Sussex and the Internal Fire Museum of Power in Ceredigion?

[@g3cd]

Looked it up - in Germany, manual operators still worked until the late 1990s for the East German Reichsbahn and in certain military sectors (while civil operators where replaced in 1966). Also the first German mobile net, the A-net introduced in 1955, had manual operators 😱

[@CashMattock]

I’ve lived on the boarder of Penfield NY

[@chrisprobert6]

Ha " Wibberly wobberly"! Is what digital, cannot do..💪👍

[@KeritechElectronics]

Interesting Strowger story :)

[@Colin_Ames]

Great story!

[@richardbrobeck2384]

Great video I loved the history lesson !

[@weapea]

And If you buy anything today, itll be broken tomorow and you couldnt repair it, theres never done even spareparts on todays electronics. 😢 Vs 1930 or what ever, they all works fine even today, and you could still buy parts to them and repair them fully!

[@mumblbeebee6546]

Lovely story! Of course it could only happen in the USA, you upright Brits avoided all such corruption temptation by making telephone operators leave when they got married 😎

[@SuperRetroville]

You're not wrong... Rowntrees confectioners in York did that.

[@nnov_tech_chan7891]

Video editing looks a bit aggressive, but still manageable.

[@wideyxyz2271]

❤

[@c42xe]

1:50 Hook up an RPI and create an old style Internet with it. I think that there is already software for it but im not sure. I think i saw this idee on YT.

[@fus132]

Setting up a dial-up system would be crazy, but then you'd be unable to use the phones due to them sharing the same wire with the modems.

[@gwesco]

Asterisk VoIP server. I taught this in my VoIP class.

[@sxsphil]

Glad you are keeping it working. I'm a U S step switch collector.

[@hackmodular]

Hey Phil! Nice to see you here, we’re big fans of your channel 👍