To my knowledge, my parents have no electrical, electronic, or electronical experience.
Ever since I was little, I was the only one fiddling with the wires at my house, so it was a mystery to me that I and my brother-in-law worked for telephone companies (BellSouth, AT&T, and Sprint). My other brother-in-law was somewhat in the telephone business with OCLI then JDS uniphase.
My dad told me something the other day that kind of shocked me.
I knew he started on the Omaha Fire Department in 1956. I also knew that as a new hire he did every kinda of shit job at the fire department.
He cleaned toilets, mowed yards, polished brass, cooked food, ran errands, climbed to the top of the grain elevator to extinguish a burning motor, carried dead bodies,.... The list of Garkin menial tasks go on without end.
However, he really surprised me with one job. In 1957, 911 had not been invented yet. He was posted to a communications/dispatch room for duty. It sounds like the radios were from the 1930's, and the telephone and telegraph equipment was from the 1890's!!
Every fire station had a dedicated phone line that came to this room. My dad ran the "cord board"
- one fire station would ring and request to get connected to another fire station. Yes, he was the "girl with a smile in her voice" (yeah, I don't believe it either!). To me there are few jobs more telephone-ish than being Ernestine the operator!
They also had remote "fire call boxes".
These were mostly used in the Northeast part of the United States in the urban areas.
They were all strung on the same two wires, kind of like a "junkyard circuit".
They were a very simple clockwork spring windup with a code of long and short rings. Three long, three short rings of a large brass bell would mean "box 33" would mean 3rd and Broadway, for instance. Someone pulling the handle would start the clockwork turning a switch on and off.
Will wonders ever cease?
jack
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