Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Panel Telephones & Bell System "Turkeys" of the 1960's Message-ID: Date: 9 Oct 89 15:11:51 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us Organization: Segue Software, Cambridge MA Lines: 33 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 438, message 3 of 7 In article kitty!larry@uunet.uu.net (Larry Lippman) writes: > An interesting Bell System offering which came out in the >early 1960's (about the same time as the panel telephone) was the 1A >Home Interphone System. ... We had one of these in our house in Cambridge when we moved here in 1981. It had long since been de-tarriffed, but we could keep it and pay several dollars per month as long as we wanted. The previous owner told me that the last time it broke in the mid 1970s they had to fly someone up from Philadelphia, nobody else remembered how to fix it. It wasn't working very well, so I called repair and they told me that they couldn't fix it, take it or leave it, so I left it and they came and removed all of the old grey dial sets and put in modular jacks. One nice thing is that because of the Interphone our house is wired with 12-pair cable (all of which they had to snake, the house was built in the 1880s) terminating in a punch-down block in the basement. Next to the punch-down block, there is also a box full of relays similar to that for a 1A key system that the installer left here. ("We don't want it, either.") > The Bell System had grandiose plans during the 1960's for a 1A >Home Interphone System in every home, ... They must have been nuts -- wiring every house in the country with 12 pair? If it had been at all successful, we all shoulda bought copper mining stock. John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 864 9650 johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {ima|lotus|spdcc}!esegue!johnl Massachusetts has over 100,000 unlicensed drivers. -The Globe