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

Here's some obscure, it don't matter, but what the heck, trivia.
Graybar was originally part of Western Electric, spun off as a seperate entity about 1920.
Who is/was Western Electric? They either made or bought almost everything the 'Bell' operating companies used/installed.
What happened to them? Absorbed by AT&T at the unbundling that began in 1980.
I believe that ITT was the main supplier to the United Telphone companies, now Sprint or NOW Embarq.
And I think Stromberg-Carlson,modern day GTE, as in 'Gee, No, GTE', was the main supplier to General Telephone operating companies.

John C.

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

Never knew Grabar was part of Western Electric. Western Electric became Lucent, when AT&T spun them off. That's about it for me.

Nope, John. Automatic Electric was the supply arm of GTE. Stromberg-Carlson (later Comdial) was a "floater". It supplied equipment to really independent independents. Of course, they also supplied to United, etc. and the government.

Yes, ITT was a big supplier to United/Sprint/Embarq, but so was North Electric (a mirror of Western Electric). Their products were identical to Western Electric, but expensive. That's why most of UTS's equipment came from ITT. Low bidder in my opinion.

Bill, Graybar was the product of Gray and Barton, two people who were very heavily involved in the race to the patent for the telephone. When they gave up fighting the fact that Bell won, they decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". While their company wasn't the sole source of supply to the Bell System, they were very instrumental in bridging the gap between Bell and independent companies with regard to supply.

Yes, they manufactured fans, toasters and irons like Western did.

Gray & Barton (Graybar) produced equipment for Bell after the big patent suit. It was part of what became Western Electric, which became ------------- and on it gos.

Ken.

So then, did North Electric become North Supply? And then NS started handling ITT material, (like graybar, lincoln Supply and just about anybody else in the Telco field. North supply has pulled in their horns and closed a few warehouses. Are they going back to just supplying operating companies, or going out of business? Company I work for now did very little business with them. Previous employer bought just about everything from them! They had everything! And their sales people either knew about 'it' or knew where to find 'it'!
What happened to AE? For that matter, what happened to SC?
Re Western Electric. I was raised and lived in KC,MO 'til I was 40. When the big change happened, the manufacturing plant in Lees Summit (outside KC) eventually got sold. And the repair center in Overland Park shut down. Don't know what finally happened to the repair center. I believe it was at 67th and I35.
You know, I'm thinking that the unbundling happened right at retirement point for a LOT of Telco employees. That was when most companies retired people after 30 years, and that would have been a second major turnover point based on Telcos doing serious hiring about 1920.

John C.

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

John, you'd cry ----

I-35 and 67th St. is a vacant lot the last time I was by --- I believe they are going to build an auto dealership.

Lee Summit's has been handled by various leasing companies, it has data centers, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, just a little of everything.

North Supply / Embarq, as best as I can tell is selling to only themselves. Their main warehouse is about 40 miles from me, at Gardner (New Century), the "Queen Mary of the Prairie".
It is a real ghost town.

KLD

Yes, John. SNS is staying in business, but under the name Embarq Logistics and yes, they are only supplying operating telcos, broadband and cellular carriers.

Yes, North Supply and North Electric were related, but I don't remember the relationship.

As for Automatic Electric, I really don't know what happened. I am sure they were sold off after Verizon took GTE over.

Stromberg-Carlson became Comdial for systems and their central office switch manufacturing was sold off to a European company. Comdial has now become Vertical.

This is what really happend....

Chaulk full of nuts took over maxwellhouse coffee
and then bought out a texstile plant for the string and merged with a food cannnery in Boston to invent communications.

SS, I love it! Best laugh I've had in a couple of weeks! Thanks, John C.
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

Im always having fun in this business. The fun part is how I hack and slash my way through it. An old timer once said to me, "You can be a hacker or a slasher what do you want to be"? I did not answer him he was a prick who was the installation manager of the Lynn, MA. Garage. His name was Bill Butner. His boss, and mine was Al Daley and John Lynch. Oh, this makes it more funny John Lynch tried to sue Judge Greene over the break-up.

My grandfather worked for western electric as a central office installer foreman. This was befor the stock market crash of 1929. Yes, everything was Western electric. Let's just say Western Electric was bell labs for history purpose. Now my granfather is screwed. His has to take his 5000 shares of western electric stack and cash them in to live on.

Those same sares today would be worth 10 million.

So, the guy is laid off like the rest of the people at that time.

What does he do.... Nothing until world war 2 starts... Ok he's got a chief radio operators license along with his Western Electric Backgound.

Who hires him?

Ok, I give up. Old grand daddy really srewed around with radio and electricity. A german, by the last name of Lawrence Orne smuggled out of germany and lived in his house in Revere Ma. for about 2 years. They made things work. The government helped them and.....

I think Automatic electric or maybe Leich electric.
sold out to SIEMENS AG

Lucent got involved somewhere on class 5 office.
There was a factory in Arizona.

Heck, I'm not real sure what the heck happen and guess dont care anymore.

I know 36 years ago i went to SATT (toll switch) school in Northlake. Il. (Automatic Electric.)
... and ...
got a ticket from one of Chicagos finest (crooks)
Said i could go down the office and pay cash for the fine.
You figure ?

My dad also a instuctor for the class for the #5ESS. He did crkt board translation for the techs to undertand.
His dad also helped him before he died. Listen, for the past 3 day's I had to bitch at a t-1 carrier and tell them to change the CPC disconnect timing. Western Electric or who ever built the first none assisted 3 didgit dial code withoout operator intervention basically was a 700 type switch. Lucent is a stock ownership name with nothing to do with it.

Lucent got involved somewhere on class 5 office.

No, the the government got involved somewhere on the #5ESS. In reality if you invested in Lucent or AT&T 20 years ago tell me what you have.(NOTHING)Whith a capital N.

You might have 6 or seven other spin off's but you still got shit. It's not IA2 about trivia. The system is called 1A screw.

SS, is it me or are you a bitter old f--t like me? Maybe there needs to be an unedited, unsupervised thread on this site. Naw, it would wind up killing the whole web-site and I really do enjoy readin' and writin', and helpin' when I can.
John C.

Theres a lot more we can get away with in the private forums that we can in the public ones.

Sorry, I got a little carried away.

While surfing the web, I happened across this site, and the Trivia Forum. Here’s my take on the issues discussed, but first some background. I started my 40 year telephony career in 1963 as a Western Electric Installer on #5 X-Bar (2 wire flat spring and wire spring), as well as #4 X-Bar (flat spring), and Step. In 1971 I went to work for Stromberg Carlson., as a #5 X-Bar installer, which SC was installing throughout the US in independent telcos. This was Northern Electric X-Bar, identical to the Western equipment, except its color – WE was gray while NE was green. I spent 32 years with SC, eventually retiring in 2003 as Manager of SW Development on the DCO.

Western Electric was the supply side of AT&T until the breakup of Bell. They became Lucent, with a separate stock offering. In November 2006, they merged with France’s Alcatel, with a new stock offering. It’s generally thought that WE only supplied switching equipment to Bell Operating Companies, however, they did sell to Rochester Telephone (an independent), and to New England Tell, which in some ways was considered an Independent.

Stromberg Carlson had a checkered history. When I started in 1971, they were owned by General Dynamics, and in fact I draw a GD pension because of that. The headquarters was located in Rochester , NY. For many years, their main telephony product was the X-Y switch, which was deployed in about half of all independent telephone companies in the US. This was a step by step design that operated in a horizontal shelf, unlike the vertical bread boxes of the Strowger switches produced by WE. SC developed the ESC electronic cross reed switch in the late 60’s early 70’s, and eventually the DCO, a fully digital switch. In 1977 SC moved its’ headquarters to Tampa, Florida, and all it’s manufacturing to Lake Mary, Florida. The DCO was the first class five digital switch to go into service in the US. This occurred on July 17, 1977, in Richmond Hill Ga., where I was the lead Installer on that project. In the 70’s SC also developed the DBX, a digital PBX product. It’s not generally known, but the DCO and DBX, while developed in parallel, were two completely different designs, especially in the switching matrix. In fact I can not recall any common parts, with possible exception of power supplies. Both designs did use DEC processors and Assembly Level software language, but used different processor types.

SC was sold to United Technologies in 1982, a marriage that lasted about one year. UTC was after the DBX product, but had no desire for the DCO. By this time the DCO was deployed in a number of independent telcos, in direct competition to Northern Electric’s (NORTEL) DMS equipment. SC’s customer base was almost exclusively the small independent telcos in the US, first with the X-Y, then ESC, and eventually the DCO. With a few exceptions, DCO’s were not purchased by United, Sprint, or GTE. Later when the smaller independents were being absorbed by the larger ones, a number of DCO sites were picked up by what became Verizon and others. A number of DCO’s were installed in Canada, and off shore, notably in American Samoa, Korea, and Guam. In the mid 80’s the DCO underwent Bellcore evaluation and was purchased by Bell Operating companies, notably Bell South.

For most of its 100 year history, SC supplied a full range of products to the telephone operating companies – not just switching systems - but operator systems, test gear, tools, cable, poles, and telephone sets. In the 80’s, SC sold their Charlottesville, Va. telephone manufacturing complex to COMDIAL. By then, SC’s major product was the DCO, including the Class Five switch, and a version designed as a MSTO for cellular networks, and as a Carrier Switch for the smaller long distant carriers.

In 1983 SC and its DCO was purchased by Plessey of England. They wanted access to the US market as they too had a digital switch called System X. Plessey failed to understand that US standards were completely different from European standards, and it would have required a major redesign of the System X, before it could be deployed in the US. In 1986 Plessey was bought by a consortium of the UK’s GPT and Siemens. In 1990, Siemens took full control of SC, and renamed the company Siemens – Stromberg Carlson. As with Plessey, Siemens wanted access to SC’s customer base so that they could deploy their digital switch, the EWSD. At least Siemens had done their homework, and the EWSD was compliant (almost) with US standards. However, a majority of the smaller SC customers refused to buy the EWSD, and insisted that they would only go with the DCO and it’s upgrades, or go with DMS switches. Thus Siemens marketed both the DCO and EWSD narrow band switches throughout the 90’s and early 00’s. With the advent of broadband and soft switches, the DCO was at last on the short end of the stick, as Siemens refused to redesign it for today’s telephony environment. Eventually the Stromberg Carlson name was dropped. In 2006, what was left of the core SC group consisting of a few DCO engineers and support personnel was sold to Genrand of Dallas Texas.

The above is only a small part of the total picture as far as SC is concerned, but those stories will have to wait till later.

Interesting, in deed. As a Certified (Certifiable?) DBX tech, I can attest to the rugged design of the equipment.

I also spent many years cleaning X-Y wipers. The Navy loved the X-Y as it did not need gravity ( a rolling ship---which way is "down"?).

Thanks for the memories.

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.

I know what you mean about the "Grey Whale". I agree that it was "close" to 1A2, but it was really more similar to Comkey since it used T/R/A and L with common grounds.

I agree that GTE was a great company, but you have to admit...They sure had some ugly phones.

Ed -

Ugly phones -Did they ever! Great switches and awful phones. Their KV set used LEDs instead of 51A lamps, but for some reason, the dial was off center! Any customer that saw it threw up their hands and wanted a 2564 set.

Go figure.

Sam

Sorry if I'm sidetracking a little here, but I think the pieces are starting to fit together regarding my curiosity about the GTD-5. I know that AG Communications eventually fell under the ownership of Lucent. So, AG Communications was initially the result of GTE selling it's switching division to AT&T?

Ed and silversam, did you ever 'get' to work on the TIE 2040/3060 EKS? Company I worked for in KC put in 13 (how ironic) of them. What nobody told us until we started howling about how hard it was to get parts was, it was dropped as a current product 2 weeks after we put in the 1st one! The only real problem we had with them was crosstalk. You had to have a o-scope to find the culprit(s). You clipped on each station card, (1/phone about a foot square) and replaced the card with the highest 'jitter' voltage on a specific pin. And you replaced cards until the crosstalk was gone. The power supply on the system in the ladies room had to be left in place when they traded up. It kept the room warm in the winter! The P/S put out 27 volts + and -, at 10 amps! 108 pounds! Ah, da gud ol' dazes! John C.

John:

The only work that I ever did on this system was MAC work, as in station relocations at my family's office. Most of it was straight-forward except for the intercom code matrix. The first conductor was related to the first digit dialed and the second conductor was the second digit. The whole show rode upon the yellow pairs on the second binder coming out of the "KSU". Other than that, I don't remember it being much different from the general 1A2 architecture.

I never heard of any crosstalk issues, in fact the system that they had was pretty reliable. The interconnect that installed the system (practically unheard of in 1974) actually hired me to refurbish phones and clean the warehouse. I never saw a single card or set come back in as defective in the year that I worked there after school.

Years later, I took some of their extra sets and rigged them into my next employer's 1A2 equipment using the "T/R/A/L" concept and they behaved just fine.

Mike -

Absolutely. My division at GTE was GTECS (Communications Systems). We supplied PBX's and Private Networks. GTE really wrote the book on Private Networking (going back about 25 years). Our flagship product was the GTD-4600 (or GTD-4 as it was originally called). Very reliable, very flexible, very, very good at networking. We had private networks in for Westinghouse, IBM, GE, Kodak, Xerox, Cape Kennedy, Warner Bros., NASA, Irving Bank, CSX, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Lenox Hill Hospital, Fireman's Fund,State Governments of Missouri, New Mexico and Illinois, etc. Anybody who was anybody who had a private network wanted the 4600. I was cerified as a Test Engineer (switchman) on the product and then went on to run some of the private networks as a Site Manager.

When Corporate sold everybody off the big question was were we going to go with the CO's (to ATT) or with the Interconnect/PBX division (Fujitsu). We lost and went to Fujitsu.

The GTD-5 was an excellent product that just got cut off in it's prime. I was told from a reputable source that one of the reasons that GTE decided to divest was the cost of CO manufacture. The GTD-5 was "mature" and now just needed routine enhancements. The estimated cost for dseveloping the GTD-6 was reported to senior management at 1 Billion dollars. They decided that was too much.

As long as I'm babbling on here; VOIP is big news these days. The last enhancement to the GTD-4600 was PD-200 - Packet Data Switching through the Voice Switching Matrix of the 4600. Essentially IOVP (Internet over Voice). I saw a demonstration of it and it worked like a champ. Unfortunately when Fujitsu inherited the product they shut off all development and manufacturing and pushed their own F9600.

Sam

John C -

Sorry, I never worked on the EKS for TIE. 1030's, 2050's and some little mickey mouse product that had about 4 CO lines and 8 or 10 stations. It came in a sealed box that you screwed to the wall and the phones and lines plugged in with modular plugs. Programming was done from the first station.

I did do a lot of work with the early Iwatsu systems. They were very much like the early TIE and Shimcom T,R,A,L. Almost 1A2. They had one model (maybe the 714?) that was 7 CO lines and 14 MANUAL Icm stations (you had 14 pushbuttons on the set to ring other station users. There other model had a regular DICM.

Sam

I chuckle to think of all of the fights around the dinner table on Sunday night at Grandma's house, I worked for Bell, she worked at Automatic Electric. The biggest argument was over the GTD-120 PBX that was marketed by Illinois bell as the 100E , they were never maintained right by us, and were always breaking down. And she used to tell me that Western Electric couldn't get the Dimension right so they had to supply us with a real system...

Just makes me laugh all over again.

The GTD-120 was more reliable than the Dimension? That's a new one to me for sure.

Ed -

The GTD-120 was a nice little system and as I remember, it was the first small PBX to offer a direct T-1 Interface (This about 1982). Any system not maintained well will give you grief (Illinois Bell probably didn't send enough guys to school, have enough spare parts etc.)

The real problem with the GTE PBXs wasn't the PBX - it was the phones.

We put an OMNI digital PBX with Electronic Phones in for Apple Computer. It worked fine. One day we got a call that no one could access their phones. We came out and discovered that a secretary, who, having been given notice went around and as her last act on the job put a password into each phone (a cute feature, rarely used) and then locked them all.

We discovered we couldn't get in to the password from the system console! The password was stored in firmware in the phone and was not accessable at all! Disconnecting the phones required waiting a couple of months for the set to die quietly!

We had to replace ALL the sets.

The next revision of software took care of that problem, but it seems we were always playing catchup with the instruments.

Sam

We took the last GTD-120 that we had under maintenance out of service in 1993. We've since installed two replacement systems at the same site. What's funny is that the GTD still sits there, as if ready for us to fire it back up. The customer called recently and asked what they should do with it since they need to make some space. I gave them the names of several refurbishers since there's a good chance that there are some out there kicking along. From what I have been told, the did find a buyer and fetched a decent amount of money for it.

It's funny how you can go into places where the customer has always had a PBX and you can tell from what's left, what they had. Sometimes 2 or 3 systems back! And sometimes get paid to haul it away, AND make a little $ from the refurbers!


Large hotel/motels come to mind. In the mid '90's I put in a 1005 Mitel Hybrid. Had to move the Siemens 232 and the ??? Japanese Stepper out as part of the sales agreement! That stepper was 7 feet high and probably 12 feet wide and about 3 feet deep. Unlocked the main equipment rack and started to roll it out to start disassembly. Thank the Lord I had help, that thing did NOT want to stop rolling! The Siemens we sold to refurbers, all but the cabinet. But, it made a real nice gun cabinet, once I stripped it out. That Japanese stepper, we sold to the local scrapyard. Got enough to pay the gas to haul it out there. John C.

I still have an omni and sbcs's running
out there

I haven't heard much regarding the GTD-5 since Lucent aquired AG Communications. Are there still alot of GTD-5s out there?

Mike:

I wouldn't say that there are a lot of them out there, but there are plenty of bits and pieces. I know that there are some in former GTE properties that are now Verizon. Many former GTE territories are still using the 3072 line ESU made by GTE/Automatic Electric. Here are a few remaining GTD5 remotes but I have absolutely no clue what's hosting them:

SARKFLXARSA (St. Armonds Key, FL)
SARKFLXARSA (Parrish, FL)
LAIEHICORS0 (Laie, HI)
MKPUHICORS1 (Makapu, HI)
KLKKHICORS0 (Kealakekua, HI)
KLAOHICORS0 (Kalaoa, HI)
VRNNORXXRS0 (Veronia, OR)
SCHLORXXRS1 (Scholls, OR)
STFRORXXRS1 (Stafford, OR)
TRRHINXDRS0 (Terre Haute, IN)
HRSNIDXARS1 (Harrison, ID)

In the Verizon areas where I know that GTD5's existed, they all appear to have been replaced with the 5ESS. I wonder if there is a way that the many AE ESU's are working behind them somehow.

This is a good question for one of the former GTE telco guys for sure.

County wide -

Still have an omni running! I haven't seen one in close to 20 years. They were great switches. The creature (sorry, I mean feature) phones were sometimes a little funky, but like all the GTE product line, the switches were rock solid.

Sam

Although our two GTD-5s were replaced by two 5ESS/SM-2000s, I remember hearing about Lucent's GTD-5 upgrade option. I'll have to hound them about this while at the their training facility in September, to find out how they are supporting these switches. Thanks for providing that list, Ed.

Reminds me of the NEC Patrician 412 (?) circa late '70s

Let's see, was it silversam that mentioned the 4 X 12 Iwatsu? Only one I know about was the Omega III 412. It used the regular Omega III phone with some straps cut, or installed, I don't remember which. There was, OF COURSE, a quite expensive proprietary programmer that you needed for any purpose but turning the thing on and off! Used 4 keys for C O and the other 16 for........ you guessed it, intercom! Altho all buttons had LED's, I believe only #1 station had BLF functionality. To do more would have taken 4 times the power supply, for all those lo-tech, high current, 1st generation LED's. The bigger III's had straps and jumpers in the phones and on the cabinet PCB's to do all sorts of things. The only 'programming' was on the speed dial number ROM, which required another expensive, proprietary programmer. That's enough excitement for 1 day kid's. Next time I'll tell you about the GTE Omni I installed in the only privately owned building on a U. S. Army fort. John C. (Not Garand)

As I was rereading some of the Trivia, I came across the Richmond Hill, Ga. comment and my memory was jogged a bit. I had driven through/by Richmond Hill a hundred times in the late 70's and early 80's. The question is why would a sophisticated piece of technology be installed here? There's absolutely nothing here except piney woods. Well there's Fort Stewart and Savannah! Just down the road in St. Mary's there's an almost forgotten about run down army ammo base with a pier. From the main gate, it was about 2 miles to the pier on old narrow service roads. Speed limit about 10mph and watch out for the deer! That old army base is now Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay. So, the work you did in '77 was predicated on world politics beginning the early to mid 70's and my involvement in '78 and '79. You see, I was stationed aboard the USS Simon Lake and my job was to ensure land based communications were ready when the ship arrived and we could begin servicing the east coast SSBN fleet! Thought you might like to know.

John -

I worked on an Iwatsu 714 system - 7 Trunks and a Manual ICM with 14 pushbuttons for "button and buzzer" Intercom. Took a 25 pair cable and wired like a 1A2/Comkey system (TRAL). This was back in the mid 70's.

It was a TIE system I was talking about. I got a "fill in" job from my boss to throw this little system in a parking garage in midtown Manhattan. It was a sealed box (riveted shut) that had 4 RJ-11s on one side (for CO Lines) and 8 or 10 or 12 on the other side (for stations). A power cord plugged into the wall and all programming (what there was of it) was done from the first station port.

Very limited, but it required almost no technical expertise to install and or maintain.

This was about 1983 and I thought at the time it had to be the beginning of the end.

Let me say this once: "As the equipment gets smarter, the technicians CAN get stupider".

I've known very few employers over the years (GTE was an exception), who didn't hire technicians one grade level BELOW what was required for the job - And then let them learn their way to competence through OJT. If the job required Rocket Scientists, they would hire college graduates. If the job required College graduates, they would hire HS graduates.

Well, if the system requires a skill level commensurate with HS dropouts, half the employers will hire illiterate, illegal aliens.

Sorry for the rant.


Sam

I understand the illegal alien rant, and my attitudes about THAT subject WILL get deleted and I'll get my -ss chewed, so 'that's all I've got to say about that'. Thanks Forest, that expression is sooo great! Of course I think I can say that as a result that tends to make the H/S dropouts competitive with the H/S graduates, and pushes everybody further up on the incompetence scale! John C. (Not Garand)

A couple of years ago my contractor got a job to install V & D cabling for a Board of Ed office building. A small job (for us) - about 200 each V&D cables. Cat 5E for both, Voice on 110, Data on Patch Panels. We also had to build out the Comm room to "Bell System Specs". We did everything to spec - Nothing less than 5/8" hardware, cloth covered green wire ground, etc. Job is testified and certified. The City comes in and takes pictures so that they can show everyone "what a job is supposed to look like."

Now the Phone System contractor comes in. He hangs a piece of equipment (don't remember what it was, but nothing I'd ever seen before) in one of the racks and has one guy who knows the color code punch down the tails on the backboard. Another guy loads a cd and does some very minor programming. When he gets in trouble he steals the DT off the alarm system, hooks up a modem and has the factory dial in and fix everything.

The people placing the sets speak no English whatsoever. They kept complaining some jacks didn't work. I kept retesting them - all OK. Eventually we have a meeting with their PM (who speaks English). I prove the jacks good with a Cat5E test- But his phones still don't work! THey swap the phones and they work. It must be my fault! What are they doing? They're swapping out the sets, but not swapping the mounting cords. Bad mounting cords were their problem. I have to troubleshoot for these mutts?

When I left they were still fighting with Verizon about incoming service not working. They had T-1s and couldn't figure out how to troubleshoot or test them.

How the heck is any legitimate employer paying a decent wage and benefits and demanding a high level of expertise and competence supposed to compete with someone like that?

Disgusted - you bet.

What the hell have they done to my industry?!?


Sam

I'm beginning to know what the LEC guys felt like around 1980! John C. (Not Garand)

John -

So tell me about the Omni S1 installed in the only private building on a US Army fort.

I know the military liked the Omni (not sure why), I mean it was a very good switch (as long as you kept away from the creature (sorry, feature) phones, but still.....

I remember training with some officers on the GTD-4600 when I was down in Reston. There was also a classroom that none of us were allowed into. It was training for the OMNI SV (I think) - except the regular Omni series only went up to IV. Or maybe it was VI - whatever, it was for a hitherto unknown version of the OMNI and the only people that went in to the room were in uniform.

I've also got some real interesting stories about UN embassies and the like. Names will have to be changed though.


Sam

Wow, we have allowed this thread to drift widely away from the original 1A2 and Comkey subject. It has become more of a "nostalgia" thread. How about starting a new thread in the "General" category so that we can keep things in their proper places. Thanks, guys.

As this thread reaches nearly a year old, I think it's safe enough to lock it to prevent it from continuing any further.

Lightninghorse is going to start up a thread titled "nostalgia" in the Phone Booth for everyone to enjoy.