atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Antique Telephones Miracle on Second Avenue

Arther,

Link didn't work....try this one

https://long-lines.net/operations/MiracleOnSecondAvenue/FC.html

BTW I worked on this as an outside contractor (Executone) for some specialized equipment that was in the CO. Thanks for the memories :bow:

Link to movie: https://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2011/3/9/AT&T-Archives-Miracle-on-Second-Avenue

Thanks for sharing. At around 11:56 they show what looks to be a 500 set but with a beehive lamp smack in the middle. I've never seen such a phone!

At around 7:40 in the movie, some guy is musing about how a person can make it through the day without using a phone. I wonder if he's still around to see us now?

Over all, though, it was a very cool little documentary...

These phones crack me up!
https://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2012/1/31/AT&T-Archives-Design-Line-Fashions

Jeff, that was the current model 500Y, equipped with a message waiting/ringing visual lamp. It was quite normal, despite the ugliness. It may have been a 500YM, since full-modular phones were in full distribution in the NY/NJ area in 1975.

I still can't believe all of the effort that went into putting a crossbar switch back into operation. I'd have thought that they'd have replaced it with an ESS. Even then, they had portable #1 ESS switches for disaster recovery.

I did like seeing how they put the early version of 710 splicing into action and it obviously proved itself. I don't see how they could have accommodated the total project otherwise. I will admit that I did see a splice bundle of beenies at one point, but that may have been stock footage for drama.

It is my understanding that this fire is what brought about the mandate for plenum-rated cable in buildings. They say that the fire spread was due to the massive number of vertical cables that helped spread the original fire in the cable vault to the upper levels of the building. I'm assuming that major changes were made in cable jacket design for risers as well.

I was 14 years old living in northern NJ at the time that this fire occurred and I remember it well. We were 30 miles away and still experienced dialing issues for many weeks due to the massive re-routing of traffic.

I wonder what Verizon would do today in such circumstances. My guess is that they would walk away and sell it to Fairpoint for pennies on the dollar.

Man, The Bell System was such a great company. Thanks a lot, Judge Greene.

I picked up a NOS refurbed "Noteworthy" on E-bay for $45 a couple of years ago. That's the rotary dial trimline I tease touchtone only users with.

the customer bought the case but AT&T /Bell owned the inside components. They used to have a sticker on the bottom to that effect

Ev, I took a close look at the video, and the 500V's appear to be non-modular.

I'm sure they probably had a large cache of them on hand for telethons, phone banks, etc, just as they had trailer mounted banks of payphones.

I'm sure they ran the numbers comparing cost and time for cleaning vs replacement of the switch, and probably considered other factors such as available space for the new switch(s), availability of new switches, etc.

Apparently, some equipment _was_ replaced with ESS.

According to https://www.privateline.com/issues/p.l.No11A.html, which quotes from the book _Telephone: The first hundred years_ by John Brooks (out of print at the time the article was written, although it looks like there are ~200 copies available from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Telephone-First-Hundred-John-Brooks/dp/0060105402), there were 12 exchanges, and 5 toll switches in the building, serving 104,000 lines (170,000 telephones).

"The work to be done in the damaged building varied all the way from installing new ESS equipment and writing computer programs for it to cleaning smoke-damaged relays with toothbrushes and Q- tips. A couple of happy circumstances speeded the work along. One of these was the fact that the the third floor of the burned building happened to be standing vacant at the time, thus providing space for the rapid installation of an entirely new main frame for handling trunk calls, which was shipped by cargo jet on February 28 from Western Electric's Hawthorne works. Another was the convenient availability for emergency use of excess switching capacity, from the ESS installations at Seventh Avenue and Eighteenth Street and at New York Telephone headquarters at Sixth and Forty-second. Such capacity could temporarily accommodate 28,000 of the 104,000 served lines."