atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems REAL TRIVIA

Trivia, has anyone here worked on Tie 1A2 systems. They made a 1A2 system with their own phones, and the system sold real good because a standard feature that was included was voice announce intercom calls with handsfree answerback. Way advanced for it's time.

Oh, yes. I remember it well. My father's real estate office had one of these systems. 50 pair per station.

The KSU was the size (and weight) of five cinder blocks an the lamp flash wasn't done by a motorized interrupter. It was a card that consisted of a bunch of timed relays. It was noisy, certainly not something that could be installed in any quiet environments. All cards had a simple metal ring to pull them, like you would see on a keychain. We laugh now, but it was pretty high-tech in 1976.

It's funny, the receptionist used to amaze me how she could tell when a call was getting ready to come in, even before the phone would begin ringing. It was because the amplifier/speaker that provided the warble tone ringing was "asleep" until a call arrived. She could hear the click of the speaker when the KSU sent power to the amplifier in the set. Too much info...........

This was one of the first times I ever saw two-pair 1A2 (T/R/A/L) and was likely the motivational factor in Western Electric and Bell coming out with the Comkey systems. At least Comkey systems kept the amplifier board in the sets hot all the time so there wasn't the click.

The dealer around here also installed the tie sets with sanbar, itt and we ksu's

Just remembered, I once called tie for tech support on a system we were asked to do service on. This was about 89-90 I think. The tech support guy said I must be nuts. Tie NEVER made 1a2 phones. I asked him to ask someone else. HE got a lesson that day.

Tie 919B if my memory isn't too bad. First one I saw was like about 1976-78? Then they upped the configuration and added the newer cards and sets. Looked like an old WE 501 or ITT 512 stood on end. Solid as a rock. Just make sure the system had a good ground.

Sold in it's many forms by Sun Communications in the KC area, second only to the Executone Company as an alternative to SWBT, a wild company owned by lawyers, co-habitat-ed with their newspaper, and tried to out do ITT-Terry phone.

Were those the "good ol' days"?

Ah, yes, SUNCOM. Weren't they the ones that went toes-up about '83? We (being Comtronics), bailed out some of the customers they left twisting in the breeze. That was when I found out TIE 80(?) phones would work on an ITT601! The rumor I heard was that Suncom left Graybar St. Louis holding the bag for 250,000 dollars! (A LOT of money back then, you young whippersnappers!) The story went that they got too big for their britches and opened a 'store' in sunny FL, so they could justify their shoreline condo as a business expense! Also heard that 1 of the owners wound up with a corporate airplane in his back pocket! That was in the good old days when you walked into a prospective customer's location, with or without an appointment, and said,"I sell phones" and they would say, "Where do I sign". It wasn't quite that easy, but close! John C.

Just rereading some of this drivel, er trivia. BobbyT's comment about Alcatel reminded me about the Thompson (?) 20 and 80 systems that came over from France about '85. Seemed like everybody was trying to find something that would compete with the TIE 6-wire system. Comtronics took it on, WHAT a nightmare! The '20' and '80' phones looked identical and the part numbers were almost identical. What fun, put in the wrong replacement and even MORE problems! "Hold" was permanent and only the phone that put the call on hold could retrieve it. It looked like it was in use everywhere else. 'Park' was the way to dispose of a call that someone else was supposed to pickup. I remember going to a site that had all lines busy but no one on the phone. The Boss had been in over the weekend and for whatever reason had put all the lines on hold. His door was locked, but we could see the blinking LED's thru the window. And he was out of town. Finally had a brainstorm and turned off the system. DUH! User friendly, NO. User antagonistic, SI. John C.

Continuing the trivia, one of the early manufacturers in Britain was the Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Co., which was created to exploit Automatic Electric's patents on this side of the Atlantic.

ATM became one of several standard suppliers to the Post Office, manufacturing ringing machines, Strowger switches, etc. In fact it's even noticeable in some of the old tone plant. The first time I ever heard a recording of American AE tone plant the ringback tone immediately reminded me of the modulated ring tone used on many of the old ringing machines here, very different from the usual Bell/Western Electric tone (different cadence here, of course).

Picking up on this old thread - I was working for GTE when they decided to divest themselves of (almost)everything but the Utility end of the business.
Automatic Electric was split into component parts and sold off.
Telephone Station Manufacturing was sold to Palco (They were down South - I think Alabama), CO manufacturing went to AT&T. There was originally a joint venture called AGCS (ATT/GTE Comm. Systems) out in Phoenix. The first thing ATT did was close down manufacturing of any new GTD-5 COs. The GTD-5 offered 8 way encryption as an option while the 5ESS and the DMS only offered 2 way. Guess who had been getting all the government contracts?
PBX manufacturing was offered to Siemens originally but they balked at GTEs terms - All employees had to be guaranteed one years employment. In the end Fujitsu bought the PBX manufacturing. A year and a day later the blood letting came.
Fujitsu closed down all the GTE product line (4600, Omni, etc) and pushed their own products. They went out of business here in the US about 5 years ago.
I will say that in 40 years of working the industry GTE was the best.

Another note about TIE. Their original product (about 1972)really wasn't 1A2, but it was close. The first TIE phone was the 1030 (10 CO lines and 30 extensions). We used to call them the "Grey Whales" because they were Grey and HUGE. The music on Hold was a little mechanical thing like out of a music box that played "Annie Laurie" .
An even earlier player in the market was Shimazaki Communications with their Shimcom phone. It got pulled off the market fairly quickly because the lamp voltage was 150 volts! If you touched the clips on the 66 block it would burn you.
Later TIE came out with a 2050 (20 COs, 50 ext)- and a more modern, sleeker design. This was about 1975.