BIG Museum Telephone Exchange Rundown - Telephone Tuesdays

[@cliff_young]

As I've said to you before Mitch you should have worked at a Telecommunications training college. You clearly explained all of the functions and instructions were clear and not muddled. Well done to Johnny for the camera and editing, well done both of you!

[@hackmodular]

Cheers Cliff! 🫡

[@robinadderley6755]

I worked in the communications industry for 40 years ,worked for Telecom Australia which became today’s Telstra.I used to work in a SxS exchange, It had pre 2000, 2000 and SE50 selectors,It was the trainees job to oil and dag the selectors and banks.I later moved to an Ericsson ARF exchange which involved lots of training courses.The first course for ARF went through the circuit diagrams and relay sequence diagrams and start of day one was sub A picks up handset .The sub got dial tone at the end of the 3rd week of the course.I finally left the exchange when modernisation to ARE and AXE exchanges did not require as many staff. I then moved to installation and maintenance of customer switching systems finally owning my own customer premises business. I have now retired but operate my model railway with PO 2000 type relays I rescued from the last SxS exchange in Tasmania. These are operated with arduino s controlled from a PC. I enjoy your channel, It brings back memories Evan though our equipment was a bit different to yours. Regards Robin.

[@scamperly]

God, I love comments like this. Thanks for sharing!

[@mickcoleman5396]

Just like me, I moved from Strowger to System X (similarish to AXE10). System X (a digital switch) used a lot less staff. The strowger I started on had 14 staff, the same System X had 1 and that was shared with other System X exchanges. In the end System X was so reliable they cut the staff. I moved into the data side (X25, Frame Relay, ATM) that all became obsolete I ended up in IP (routing and switching etc). Im still there today and something completely removed from SxS

[@hackmodular]

3 weeks to get to dial tone! I can believe it. Cheers happy you’re enjoying the videos✌️

[@rivertees]

I spent 13 years working on the strowger system in a main exchange. I dealt with local systems, trunk systems (STD), and international switching in a non-director exchange. Also dealt with TXK4 called the 'Transit' network for routing low calling destinations. Thoroughly enjoyed my time doing that before moving on to the newer, and more compact, solid state PABX's. Thankyou for showing this video the noises bring back fond memories.

[@umbertoyltp]

I grew up amongst Siemens, Ericsson and Philips exchanges as an apprentice. The lift-rotary switches are the most dramatic devices and understandable with your eyes. Magic that can be understood.❤

[@curtishoffmann6956]

"And it's just that simple! Next week, solving world hunger."

[@TDOBrandano]

Still simpler than setting up an Asterisk PBX....

[@pigpenpete]

@@TDOBrandano thats why freepbx is a thing

[@Richardincancale]

Great explanation! I remember as a child (60 years ago!) our phone number was Churchill (in Somerset) 361, surely on a UAX! Later in life I spent a lot of time creating capacity planning tools for designing national phone networks (and later, data networks) - good fun!

[@ncot_tech]

Things made more sense when you showed the alotter uniselector. I couldn't figure out how the whole system "knew" which line finder to use, and how it was wired up. I'm guessing every line is wired internally to every line finder. And the last position on the allotter is used to connect one frame to another so your exchange can handle more simultaneous calls?

[@gcewing]

Not sure, but I suspect each frame's set of line finders and first selectors handles one block of 100 incoming lines. So there would be no interaction between the allocators in different frames, and each 100 line block would have its own limit on simultaneous calls.

[@sh4dowchas3r]

When I was at uni the internal phone numbers were known as PAX numbers. I'd never really thought about it until now and I saw that PAX machine just now.

[@Colin_Ames]

Great explanation. You really have a knack for this.

[@MattRozema]

Love the explanation and the enthusiasm Mitch! I'm too far away to visit the museum any time soon, but would love to at least visit the exchange via some internet calling some time. Have you and group explored that idea at all?

[@hackmodular]

Yep you can call in on open days! Number is on the website

[@MattRozema]

@@hackmodular Thanks Mitch. Not sure why I hadn't checked the website yet. *Shrug*

[@monktoncrew]

Loving this shit, gents! I love how the movement looks like stop-motion animation, but in real life. Also, wondering when was the last time Mitch had knuckles without any injuries.

[@barnabynorman157]

I just love this. Thanks for sharing.

[@mh8265]

This was awesome, I think the best explaination I have seen, thanks!

[@maxvideodrome4215]

Seen many videos on strowger switches/etc - this is the first one that I understand 👍

[@padders1068]

Awesome video, as an electrical vehicle design engineer, I'm still totally baffled by how these old electro/mechanical phone exchanges actually work. That's not a criticism of your explanation, just the inability of my brain to process the actual workings, kinda got a grasp of it, but need to do a lot more homework to fully understand it. Thanks for sharing! 🙂😎🤓❤

[@mickcoleman5396]

i was the same and I worked on the stuff

[@davidholman2536]

Is there a museum phone at the coffee or sandwich shop? The Greggs extension

[@devttyUSB0]

Lovely content :) I wouldnt mind a little more detailed videos on the UAX/PBX. :)

[@mickcoleman5396]

everything goes to pot when the p wiper is faulty, out of adjustment or dirty...

[@stephaneblondin2224]

Great explanation!

[@markb4185]

Thank you, guys! I love this stuff.

[@StubbyPhillips]

It would probably be worthwhile showing how simple the dial mechanism in the telephone actually is and how it simply pulses the connection a number of times to match each digit dialed.

[@alexcranmer8317]

And how you can dial without using the dial by "tap dailing" on the handset cradle buttons if your timings good enough (10 pulses per second, 1 tap for each number and 10 for 0).

[@mickcoleman5396]

Taught a friend of mine how to do that his patents had a lock on the dial

[@Tocsin-Bang]

Had enough problems with the WB1400 system!

[@soniawhite7602]

Please could you confirm where the museum is?

[@blitzar8443]

This is so cool

[@dynomaticc]

how does your voice get modulated through the system?

[@hackmodular]

A good subject for a future video!

[@protoborg]

So...a modern phone number is (country)-("state")(city)-(area)(home). So a US number would be 1-ssc-aahh. Or something like that.

[@eDoc2020]

Phone numbers outside of North America have different formats. I think our North American electromechanical equipment only ever supported 7 digits, AFAIK long distance was always handled separately.

[@5Dale65]

That's somewhat similiar to what we have in Europe. In Poland it's +48 (country code, almost always with the plus sign) then next two digits is a city, where I live in Kraków it's 12, Warsaw is 22 and so on. Then you have your local number, which starts with three digits of the area code. And lastly there are four digits which belongs to a certain subscriber. So the numbers are mostly 9-digits, as you don't have to add the country code. In case of mobile phone numbers you also have 9 digits, but the first two doesn't belong to any city code, they are just random. If you want dial locally (i.e. inside a city) from a phone hooked to a land line to another phone on a land line you don't actually even have to add the city code. So you can dial just the last 7 digits and it will still get you through. However you can't drop the 3-digit area code and dial just the 4-digit subscriber number, that never worked.

[@insertaverygenericnamehere]

I am old. I used to dial that way.

[@insertaverygenericnamehere]

We also had a little PBX at home - this way, we were able to call each phone in the house (1st floor, parent's bedroom @ 2nd floor, office @3rd floor)