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From: davidb@pacer.com (David Barts)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Magneto Telephones
Message-ID: <9810@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 16 Jul 90 16:05:32 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 491, Message 3 of 7


In the late 70's or early 80's, I was on a family trip to Santa
Barbara, and we stopped at a rest area along Interstate 40 in the
Mojave Desert.  The telephone at the rest area looked like a normal
Western Electric pay phone, except that it had no dial mechanism and
there was a wooden box with a hand-crank magneto mounted beneath the
phone.

The instruction sheet for the phone was either typed or handwritten
and said to announce that you were calling from "Fenner Roadside Box
Number 4", after successfully ringing up the operator.  (It has been
about ten years, so I may not have remembered the name 100%
correctly.)

It was a cool December afternoon, and the wind was howling across the
desert. This must have induced considerable static charges in the
phone line, because the phone was ringing almost constantly.  Picking
up the receiver did not stop the ringing, and the only thing I could
hear on the line was a very LOUD, harsh static.  I was unable to raise
the operator by cranking the magneto, presumably because the static
was also causing false ringing on her end and she was deliberately
ignoring rings on that line until the wind died down and the static
went away.

It has been over five years since I have been on that stretch of I-40,
and I have never been to the Fenner rest area other than that one
time.  It would be interesting to hear what has happened to the public
phone service there.  Perhaps John Higdon has a story or two to tell
about the phone service in this area.


David Barts			Pacer Corporation, Bothell, WA
davidb@pacer.uucp		...!uunet!pilchuck!pacer!davidb