Brummie a long time ago
master brummie
If IP addresses were routed by Strowger....
Andrew.
Andrew.
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Telephone history: Telephone Service in Birmingham
- Thread starter Aidan
- Start date
DavidGrain
master brummie
I do not know if it is still in place but the Ffestiniog/Welsh Highland Railways at Porthmadoc claimed to have the largest Strowger exchange still working in the UK for their internal telephones.
mw0njm.
Brummie dude
i will have a look in the week when i am down there if its still there i will ask if they will let me take some pics of it
Brummie a long time ago
master brummie
Thanks Morturn and Spargone for the reminder of the fox and goose game, I wouldn't have remembered it at all otherwise. That blindspot for games has followed me through life, despite a career in electronics, computers and software. They just pass straight over me. Hey Ho.
Andrew.
Andrew.
Did they do away with ringing machines in System X exchanges? The only sound in a TXE4 exchange was the sound of the switches making and breaking to produce the ringing cadence from those machines. I also recall an electromechanical pendulum clock that had a curious little switch on the pendulum that only operated once in a while so you got used to the 'tick-tock' and then along would come this unexpected click. Goodness knows what that clock was for.
Richard Dye
master brummie
Curly, it’s interesting to note the reason that Stowager invented the exchange. As they say “necessity is the sprit on invention “. Stowager was an undertaker and his competitors wife was on the telephone exchange, any calls that came in for him were deferred to her husband. By developing the switch he eliminated this!
In all fairness its each to their own. I have that type of mind that sees pattens but still cannot manage my timetables. The fox and goose machine did have a patten as did a few of the penny arcade machines in the 60’s. I used to regularly empty a couple of them before getting kicked out. Today they are too sophisticated with solid state programmers.
I worked as an engineer at Rubery manual exchange during its conversion to automatic exchange. I tested the lines as the phones were changed to dialling type( 706 and 746 in think),and I remember seeing quite a few candlestick phones being thrown in a pile into an old room at the back of the exchange. How i too wished I had kept a few of them.!!!
Yes , I went to a few union meetings there too. Am I correct in thinking they actually had a bar in there or is my memory failing me?
RobT
Acemeccanoman
See here for working Strowger exchange & Fox & Goose game in Science Museum in Newhall Street.
Vivienne14
Kentish Brummie
What a lot of cable ! I guess this has significantly changed with changing technology. Viv.
Source: British Newspaper Archive
Source: British Newspaper Archive
"It will be noted that each suite commences with a cable turning section (C.T.S.), which, as its name implies, is necessary to turn the switchboard cables from the vertical run through the floor to the horizontal multiple along the switchboard. The C.T.S. is constructed of mahogany panelled to match the rest of the switchboard." from Telephony Vol. 1, J. Atkinson
In a manual telephone exchange wires from every subscriber had to be brought up to the switchboard (the 'multiple'). The wires for a given subscriber appeared at a socket at every third operator's position, ('multiple' appearances) so that by plugging to the left, ahead or the right the operator could reach every number on that exchange to make a call. Only a portion of calling lines appeared at a given operator's position though.
As long as we continue to have 'twisted-pair' copper wires from each subscriber wired back to the exchange there will be equivalent cables somewhere but they won't be going to the operators that remain in the system. They only need to be able to speak to a couple of subscribers and a supervisor and to send and receive signals from the switching system so the switchboard multiple as such is long gone.
RobT
Acemeccanoman
Pedrocut
Master Barmmie
Some other info from the 1930s concerning Telephone House…
April 1934 work began on foundations for Telephone House, completed December 1935.
January 1937 Neville Chamberlain officially opened Telephone House. Inside 239 miles of cable on and between switchboards: 631 miles of wire altogether. 5,600,00 soldered joints and 30,000 fuses.
Jan 1937 the first of the new coaxial type cables laid between London and Birmingham to yield 400 speech channels on each two pairs.
July 1937. Birmingham soon to become a television centre. The TV programmes will travel from Alexandra Palace to Birmingham along a 125 mile PO. coaxial cable from London Faraday to Telephone Home Birmingham.
April 1934 work began on foundations for Telephone House, completed December 1935.
January 1937 Neville Chamberlain officially opened Telephone House. Inside 239 miles of cable on and between switchboards: 631 miles of wire altogether. 5,600,00 soldered joints and 30,000 fuses.
Jan 1937 the first of the new coaxial type cables laid between London and Birmingham to yield 400 speech channels on each two pairs.
July 1937. Birmingham soon to become a television centre. The TV programmes will travel from Alexandra Palace to Birmingham along a 125 mile PO. coaxial cable from London Faraday to Telephone Home Birmingham.
Telephone House was still a TV centre in the 1970s, I could see the TV monitors from 95 Newhall Street. I recall being shown some 'co-ax', it looked like and was the size of gas flue liner with 'spiders' holding the core wire in the centre, (i.e. there was no solid dielectric).
I expect by then the TV signals came up from London using microwave links. Perhaps the co-ax that I was shown just went to Sutton Coldfiend from Telephone House?
