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wonderful vids

As an employee of the Bell System prior to divestiture and still an employee of a "good old telephone company" that has moved into the twenty first century, I certainly enjoyed the vids.

thanks!!!!
 
I remember talking to the operator in the late '60's and early '70's before direct dial. I was never mean to them and always said thank you, but I was only 10-11 at the time. We lived east of Kansas City and my cousins lived in Jefferson City and we would take turns calling each other on Saturday night at 11:00 after the reruns of Star Trek to discuss the episode. We could talk longer after 11:00 because the rates went down. Funny the things one remembers. That was a big deal back then. Shortly after that d/d came.
 
I heard a few ring signals in the beginning that sounded like the mechanical switch type I knew as a kid, but I swear ours was slightly higher pitched.  I certainly heard it countless times and it's etched into my memory.  Mr. Doorbell even notes and provides an example of a higher pitched signal, but it still sounds lower than the one I remember. 

 

Busy/re-order signals sounded pretty much like what I remember, and Doorbell was correct in stating that one day all ring signals would sound like that of the ESS switch.  No matter where I call today, be it local or Long Distance, all rings sound alike.  It used to be that one could tell certain offices apart based on the ring signal, as Doorbell mentioned.  Since our house was situated on the very edge of the "CYpress" exchange, many of our neighbors were served by the "AXminster" exchange, which provided a double ring pattern heard in a few of Doorbell's examples, although not using those same tones.

 

Calls made to GTE subscribers several miles away sounded completely foreign, with a buzz instead of a burring sound.
 
They quite possible were higher pitched. The ring, busy and other sounds you heard on older switches were generated using motors to provide the tone frequency and cogs switching tones in and out.

There were slight quirks from switch to switch that could lead to different sound characteristics. Each one was quite individual although they all complied roughly with the standards.

Here are some UK tones and announcements, the tones here in Ireland are similar, but not identical -busy, reorder and dial tone are more like ETSI (European Telecommunication Standardisation Institute) norms, but the ring tone and the format of the announcements is very similar.

One or two of these tones (particularly the continuous ringing tone) are from another era. The rest are fairly modern (digital switching) but may be a bit of a crackly or peaking recording.
It gives you a good idea of what the UK telephone network's announcements tend to sound like.

One of the Irish ones actually says "Ooops! You seem to have dialled an invalid number! Please check the number and dial again!)

http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/sounds.htm
 
European telephone sounds as music

The network tones are actually quite musical.

Here's some more European or UK tones turned into a piece of music by Penguin Cafe Orchestra some years ago:

 
We had the double ring at home as a kid,. Then 1 long, 1 short, 1 long on the 12 party line at our camp where I moved to and have lived year round for 20 years, and there is no party line now but the same phone number. I have several of those old Bell phones and 2 desk rotary dials still hooked up. My mother was one of those operators and couldnt wait till her shift was over. I worked for Verizon that sold to Fairpoint (another story). But I had a job at a switching station one day and found casette tapes labeled "If you want to make call, please hang up and try again" and "the number you reached is not in service or has been changed" The company Dodge Caravan had a casette player and we took them out and listened to them. What a blast from the past.
 
A Sorry State of Affairs

Most telco recordings used to begin with, "We're sorry" and then explain the trouble.

 

These days, the telcos aren't sorry about anything, except the fact that they still have to provide and maintain (I use that term very loosely) land lines for residential subscribers.
 
Telephone World

You all may have been to this site before.  It is fun!  If you click over on the left on "telephone sounds" there are interesting calls that were made in a 25 year period from all over the USA at phone booths and such.  It is interesting to hear how each states telephone system had a different sound for busy, rings, switching and such.  Evan Doorbell's tapes are a lot of fun.  He made so many recordings over the years of his life.

 

http://www.phworld.org/
 
When I bought a new house in the booming northwest side of Tucson in 1978, the phone service was not keeping pace. I mean the poles with 6 lines or so per crossbar, five crossbars. We had Direct Distance Dialing, Sort Of. You could dial all the numbers (e.g. 1-517-3379712) but you were greeted with an intercept operator who had to ask you for your number because that was the only way you would be identified for billing. By around 1980 a new office had been built, intercept operators went away, and phone service was cutting edge again. Until, of course, DSL appeared for internet usage. Few lines were up-to-par for that service. Eventually that got fixed as well. A long, strange trip.
 
fun thread - thanks Launderess...my neighborhood buddy's dad worked for Michigan Bell as did my other friend, but later, on Microwave towers(ugh!). I remember phone rings being different when calling outside our area codes or beyond.

These pre-merger days of phone communications were the best (and worst) in phone service. I miss some of those old days.

Tim (wayupnorth) - neat site, and I'd like to visit Maine someday, to include that venue.

[this post was last edited: 10/7/2014-17:56]

ovrphil-2014100717473400818_1.jpg
 
Tim (Wayupnorth),

 

I took a look at the great site in which you provided the address.   Very, very cool...I would love to see this.  We have a museum in Atlanta that is at the base of a highrise (former Bell South building).   It is not as hands on as the great place depicted in that site.   I found this in Rockland, Mass and if I ever get there I would love to see this switchboard.   The link is below and you have to get to about 03:50 in the video for the really cool part to start.     They have converted PBX boards into a "central office" board.   While a CO would never have used this type of board, it is still a working board.   Sooooooo cool.

http://https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9t0LRBqC8c
 
Tom I love your description of your telephone service back in 1978 Tucson.  I would have been cool to record the exchanges if you would have only known it would one day be way back when.  

Michael this is a fun link!

 
 
I really appreciated watching the video about operator's in 1969. I worked as an operator for PT&T in Santa Rosa, Ca. from 7-76 until 10-78, first as a DA (Directory Assistance) operator and CAMA (Centralized Automated Message Accounting) operator. After the first year I moved to the Toll office in the same building where we used cord swtichboards to place operator assisted calls, overseas calls, mobile calls, (there were no cell phones then), coin phone calls, person to person, collect calls and calls for all the hotels and motels. We also placed all the calls for the Bohemian Grove. This video is a very accurate picture of what it was like to be an operator then. It was a fun job, but there was a lot of very oppressive observation of the operators by managment. The CAMA board was for every long distasnce call placed in Sonoma Co., except for Santa Rosa customers. If you dialed an LD number, the CAMA operator came on the line and said, "Your number please", keyed in the customers number that they were calling from, and said "Thank you" and then the next call came on the line, about 600 calls pre hour. This was how PT&T obtained the billing info for the calls. When Elvis died in August of 1977 I was working CAMA and I received the 1st call in the office where the customer told me that Elvis was dead. The board lit up like a Christmas tree, we did more calls that day than on Mothers Day,which was always Ma Bell's busiest day. The company had to bring in extra help for OT. And you could always tell when there was a full moon without looking at the sky, believe me the customers were crazy during the full moon. We even still had some phone numbers in the remote areas of 707 area code that had to have their phone manually rung from the switchboard, ie. one long one short, because they were on a party line. In fact where I lived as a teenager our number was Russian Gulch 3, our ring was one long one short and we had 5 homes on our party line. All of our outgoing calls had to be placed by the operator and the operator had to connect all the incoming calls too. The phone system that we have today is worlds different than it was in those days, and not always for the better. Calls are less expensive and phones more accessible, but customer service has gone right down the toilet. Sorry that this post is so long, but this video very took me to the way back machine.[this post was last edited: 10/8/2014-17:34]
 
Smithsonian Institute

In the 1980s my late husbear and I took a vacation to D.C. I'm not one for sightseeing, but one day he insisted, so we went to the Smithsonian. The theme at that time was "communications". Lots of early TVs, radios, telegraph, etc. We came to one exhibit that had a big panel board like I used to work. Of course, not connected to anything; it was just "there", not cordoned-off or anything. He said he always wondered how those things worked. So we walked over and I showed him how you used the back and front cords, how to ring and collect coins. Incoming signals and outgoing local and long distance tandem trunks and other stuff. It wasn't until I heard a sneeze behind me that I turned to see about 30 people standing behind me, watching my demo. I took a few questions and we moved on. We both had a good laff later on.

In 2003 I retired after 31 miserable years at the telco. Micro-managing and observing and criticism. If it weren't for the good pay and benefits (thanks to our union) I would have been out of there after a year max.
 
I was never an Operator.  I came in "off the street" as they used to say, as a Service Representative.  That was back when service was the top priority, not sales (see today's news story about AT&T being fined $150M for "cramming" on cellular accounts).

 

I only heard the horror stories about the workplace environment in Operator Services.  The best story was the one about a male Operator who requested a "health break" but was denied.  He took his revenge by standing up and pissing all over his board.

 

Management was a different world entirely.  In most cases, supervision was very much hands-off.  While in some management roles I found myself working past Midnight on rare occasions, if averaged out over my entire management career, there were relatively few days where I put in a full eight hours.  As long as my work was done, that was all that mattered. 

 

I was never much of a union person until I started working at The Phone Company.  As a Service Rep I quickly began to appreciate why labor unions came into existence.  Without them, Ma Bell would have literally worked her people on the front lines to death.
 
I forgot to mention in my previous post about bathroom breaks, or "specials" as Ma Bell referred to them. There was a sign that hung in the front of the room, if it was on green go, then no one else was on a special and you could then unplug from the board, turn the sign to red stop, sign out with your name and operator number, time out and take your special. When you returned, you signed back in with the current time. If the management felt that you were taking too many "specials", you would be called into the ATOM's (Assistant Traffic Office Manager) office and be reminded that the company provided you with two 15 min. breaks and a 30 min lunch and you should be taking care of your biological needs during these times, or perhaps they would need to revise your work hours to more closely coincide with your biological needs. Being called to the ATOM's office was like going to the wardens office, because you could have a cigerette, and since everybody smoked in those days this was at least a fringe benefit. I kid you not about this! If you were on the CAMA board you put up a red flag at your position and someone from DA would plug into your position so you go take your special. Once I put up my flag and it was really busy, the supervisor took down my flag and said I didn't need to go. A union steward was sitting next to me and she said yes I did, and so did everyone else too, and Agnes,(that was the supv's name) your going to see that everybody gets relieved, one at a time, or I'll call a wild cat strike! This actually happened.[this post was last edited: 10/9/2014-17:58]
 
exchanges

Does anyone remember when we had a word exchange (not sure what we called it back then) Ours was Skyline3-7220, others in town were Mohawk, Locust, seems like my grandmothers was Sunset, several others but I cannot remember..anyway does anyone know where that came from...my partner is 5 years older than I, he grew up in New Mexico..he says he never heard of such.
 
I remember the word prefix's very well. They were known as exchanges. In Richomnd there was Beacon and Capital, in Berkeley it was Landscape. In the San Francisco Bay Area the prefix's became numeric in late 1962 if I remember correctly. Area codes came in in 1963 along with zip codes for the mail. People were very unhappy about this at the time as I recall. In some towns in more rural locations if you were calling a number in the same exchange as yours you only had to dial the last 5 numbers. Before customers direct dialed long distance, they dialed 113 for the long distance operator. If you pay attention to old movies you'll notice characters dialing only 3 numbers to place a long distance call.
 
Cool clip Sudsmaster, like my earlier post, they didnt care. Now they are scrambling because people are leaving in droves and new ones are not there. All those posts about operators and the crap they went thru is very true. My ex operator mother told me all about it many years ago. She hated the job but the money was too good to just leave. Yes, washerboy, the first 2 letters of a word ended up as the first 2 numbers of the 3 in local. Like your Skyline ended up being a 75?-???? and an area code before it. But, I had a decent job there at the phone company and really loved it. Not everyone is bad there anymore, they certainly know better now.
 
Exchange Names

At the house we had until I was 6, our exchange was AXminster.  The house we moved to in 1960 was in the adjacent exchange, which was CYpress, and as a result our number had to change.  That same number is still in service at that same physical address 54 years later.

 

Before our local exchanges went to seven alpha-numeric characters, which was ahead of my time, there were only two exchanges in town, Ballard and Columbia.  Those exchanges had anywhere from one to four digits assigned to the line numbers.  IIRC from a local 1945 directory, my aunt & uncle's number was Columbia 128.  I think people in Ballard probably had to go through the operator to reach Columbia, and vice versa, but direct dialing within an exchange may have been possible -- for those who had telephone sets with a dial.

 

I remember taking another aunt to The Phone Store to order service back around 1980.  She and my uncle would come out from Chicago for the winter and rent a furnished apartment.  When the representative asked her for a local contact number, she provided my parents':  CYpress 5- 1304.  The representative had no concept of the configuration she was reciting and told her it wasn't a valid number.  I let her repeat it a few times just for the novelty, then finally translated it into "295-" for him.

 

Here's a picture of my very early issue 1950 model 500 with original number card for the line here, and a link to an on-line document containing U.S. exchange names:

 

 

http://ourwebhome.com/TENP/Recommended.html
rp2813++10-9-2014-22-40-58.jpg
 
Seeing Ralph's model 500 telephone brings back memories of when I got my very first telephone in 1971 when I was 20 yrs. old. It cost $10.00 to have one black phone installed anywhere in my cottage that wanted. I was advised by an older customer of mine that I should request the phone to be installed somewhere that would be difficult for the installer, then they would suggest that instead of my desired location they would provide a 20 ft. cord at no charge. Once you had the 20 ft, cord you would have credit on your acct. for this extra charge accessory and never have to pay for it again. In the daya before cordless phones this gave one some mobility during long phone calls. I did this and used this credit until 1983. For those of use old enough to remember, the phone system used to charge extra for everything. A colored phone was extra, even a coiled receiver cord was extra at one time too. I can remember that Macy's used to sell plastic covers that you could put over your black phone in order to have that prized colored phone. And since person to person calls we free if you didn't reach your party my family used to place person to person calls for" Sir Francis Drake" to relatives homes after we had visited and gone home so they would know that we had arrived home safely. Long Distance calls were very expensive in the 50's and 60's.
 
When I was a kid in 1950s Detroit, there was service which allowed you a fixed number of local calls a month, I think the number was 90 and if you exceeded it the extra calls were proportionately quite expensive. So periodically when somebody got poor for a while and wanted to conserve their calls, a signal would be arranged between them and my parents: one ring, call Susie back. Two rings, call some other one, etc. It was workable for small sample sizes but we kids resented having to wait for the 3rd or 4th ring to answer a call.
 
Nurdlinger - we are close in age, but I don't remember this arrangement...but it sounds familiar, if that makes sense. Long distance calls were expensive. Weekends, we could talk longer...I talked three hours to some friends after 9PM, but Sundays were perfect. I remember talking to the operators - man, ancient history.

Ralph(rpg2813) that's the phone my parent's had for eons in our Berkley house. And we had the exchange of
LIncoln...so everyone referred to their phone number by saying (even TV ads did this, too):

Call LI1-2475 or later, we learned to just say 541-2475. When area codes became necessary, we had to mention area code (313)541-2475. Then, more area codes necessitated changing our old area code from (313) to the present one for that area, 248.

Moldy-oldy days that I miss.
 
Phil, I am not sure if you grew up in the Atlanta area...but for years Atlanta and the metro area had the largest non-toll area in the country.   Meaning you could call from Macon (80 miles south of Atlanta) to Marietta (23 miles north of Atlanta) with no toll.......The metro area was 404...this was a huge area....then the 770 area code came into play I think in the 1980s.....I had moved by then my parents however still lived in the area...and they still have the same number from 52 years ago...

 
 

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