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TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Aug 2005 23:48:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 369 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson An Exciting Weekend With a Sneak Thief (TELECOM Digest Editor) Telephone Exchange Usage in Low-Volume States (Lisa Hancock) Stromberg Carlson Company? (Lisa Hancock) FSK on Voicemail for MCI (nextray) Re: How Long Can a Telephone Extension Cord Be? (Phil McKerracher) Re: Start-Up Slashes Cost of International Wireless (John Levine) Re: Start-Up Slashes Cost of International Wireless (Joseph) Re: Stock Market Ticker Tape Machines? (Reed) (Michael Quinn) Re: Classic Six-Button Keysets - Cost During 1970s? (Joseph) Re: Classic Six-Button Keysets - Cost During 1970s? (Bob Vaughan) Re: Classic Six-Button Keysets - Cost During 1970s? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Urgent Help Needed With Internet Explorer IE 6.0 (Paul Vader) Last Laugh! Another Huge Money Making Idea!!! (Steven Lichter) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: An Exciting Weekend With a Sneak Thief Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:22:51 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) This is a story which makes me _so glad_ to live in a small town (population 8000) where most people know everyone else, and things are handled in an informal way. I never realized -- seriously -- how many people around this town -- Independence, KS -- know me and care about me and try to protect me. Here is how it happened: Saturday was a _very hot_ day; temperature about 105 in mid-afternoon. But here it is mostly a dry heat, so you don't feel it quite as if it were humid, but still, it was warm. My house is in the middle of a block; there is an alley next to me. A young guy I did not know -- still really do not know -- walked up and down the street a few times over a five or ten minute period, looking sort of exasperated. He finally walked into the alley next my house, and said, "I am sorry to bother you, my ride did not show up, I really was wondering if you had a bathroom I can use." I told him I did have one, and he could use it. I also offered him a glass of ice water from the water cooler/ice maker thing on my refrigerator, which he accepted gratefully. Now I am _NOT_ trying to brag, or be 'holier than thou' or any such thing; but I do sincerely believe in 'doing to others as you would have them do to you', and _I_ have had situations being in a strange neighborhood, needing to use a bathroom, being quite thirsty on a hot day; I knew how _I_ felt on those days, so I thought 'this is how I was raised, in this small town where nearly everyone always looks out for their neighbors, etc, I will be damned if I tell this guy he cannot use my bathroom or have a drink of cold water.' He seemed very grateful when he left _with my checkbook and a box of new blank checks_ (but I did not find that out until much later). I found out about his 'tresspass' not on Saturday afternoon (when he was here) nor on Saturday night, but not until Sunday about noon when I came back home from the Episcopal church I attend here in town. Phone rang, I answered it, and it turned out to be a lady who idenfitied herself as 'the clerk at Mikies Conoco' up on North Penn Street. "Did you authorize someone to come in with a check?" No, I did not ... "Well, I know you are on the other side of town, and you may not remember me, but I work part time also for Windsor and I have been at your home to do the housekeeping stuff from Windsor, and I could not imagine you ever coming all the way across town to Mikies, or sending some guy with a check to get cigarettes and cash back." She was completely correct. We agreed I would make a trip there Monday morning when the manager was on duty to look at the security video (of the guy cashing the check, and getting cigarettes). She called me again, Monday morning to say "the guy came in again twice last night, the same way, cigarettes and cash back; the overnight clerk is the son of the manager, and he is sort of new, but I found two more of your checks here, and he told me the guy had been in twice last night." I told her I was going to stop at the bank on the way to the store and get the affidavit Officer John Edwards (Independence Police Department) had suggested I bring to him when I filed my report about the theft. I was sitting in the office of the bank manager (vice president Karen Stoner) -- [don't be impressed, in banks Vice Presidents are a dime a dozen]. Karen is the manager of our branch, but she also works on the teller line now and then, and everytime I go in she always greets me and is super friendly. [Again, don't be impressed, that's how folks in this town are: either we interact through our work, through community organizations to which we belong, through church, they are a next door neighbor, or some combination of the above. Its not like I am a rich old geezer customer tossing around piles of money at the bank, I am not. I live from one social security check to the next ... barely ...] And our Bank of America here in Independence has all of eight employees total. I told Karen about this young guy who tried to rip me off; in fact had done so, and I needed an affidavit for fraud, theft of checks, etc. She was getting it drawn up (she is also a notary which is important) when my cell phone rang again. It was Mikies Conoco again ... "hey! he came back again! he is at the front counter now, I told the clerk to stall him a little while, are you coming over here soon?" I told her I was in fact on the way then, would be there in five or ten minutes at most. I told Karen I would be back ASAP and hustled right out the door where our community taxicab driver Jeff had been waiting for me. I told him let's get to Mikies right now, pronto. He took off, but pronto was not fast enough. We pulled into Mikies, I climbed out of the cab as fast as I could and went in the store, where Officer Edwards, the store manager and her clerk were waiting for me. The clerk spoke first saying, "I tried to stall him as Sandra (the store maanger asked me to do. But then he turned around and saw Sandra whispering in the telephone (she had placed a call to 911 then she reached me (while I was in the bank). He saw her talking on the phone and he took off at a gallop. My boy friend and one of his buddies saw the guy split from the store on a run and they tried to go catch him, but he was too fast." The boy friend and his buddy watched all this and one of them said to the clerk (about me) "Is this the dude that guy tried to rip off?" and they were by the door, going to go look for the guy again, but the manager and Officer Edwards said, "that's okay, a couple other officers found him down the street; he is in custody; over at the jailhouse now, waiting until I get back to interview him." The manager showed me the security video tape and I identified him as the guy who had been over to my house Saturday afternoon looking like a sad, starved and very thirsty puppy who I had served on the 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' principle. Edwards said "go back to Karen's office and get the affidavit, then come by the jailhouse and ask for me; I will take your statement." I went back to Bank of America (the Independence branch to which I usually go), got Karen to finish up the affidavit and we stood there chatting for a few minutes. She said "you always pay all your bills by computer; your SSD deposit and your Google AdSense deposits are always credited automatically; always like a clock; Social on the fourth Wednesday of each month, Google either a day before that or maybe one or two days after that. Then you come either here to our ATM or you go by First National Bank ATM a few blocks south and take out a hundred dollars for spending money and you then authorize us to pay all your bills. Do you ever write a manual check?" I told her it was very rare; since the brain aneurysm my handwriting has pretty much gone to hell; it was far better to turn it all over to the bank to handle my bills, etc. She was reviewing my account on her screen as we chatted. She then said, "Suppose I just note here on the computer comments the phrase 'question/confirm any manual checks written by customer'; that way in the future no one will be able in a Bank of America at least, to try and rip you off like that again. When you get bills, we pay them, when you come around, you use the ATM. Oh, and if you see your mother anytime soon, tell her I will see her at the next AWOL meeting." (She and my mother are both on the board of the local animal welfare shelter which is known as AWOL [Animals With Out Love]). I left her office and walked a few blocks over to City Hall, (where our police station is located in the basement); they called Officer Edwards and as he came out to get me, two other officers were taking Timothy Garotte (pronounced 'gah-RUTH', a French name) in handcuffs to the jailhouse next door to City Hall. A thirty-year old resident of Independence, Timothy did a 'stretch' at Winfield (Kansas State Prison) for theft and forgery a few years ago, was released, and about a month ago had done the same thing to someone else. On that second time, he was bonded out of jail to wait for his trial, and _while on bond_ had chosen me as his new 'mark'. Officer Edwards said he did not think Timothy would be able to get bonded out this time around. As he walked out the door in handcuffs in the custody of two officers, he glanced at me. All I could think of to say was "Timothy, I am so ashamed of you ... I treated you the way I would have wanted to be treated, and you did this to me in return." Edwards found a couple of my checks in Timothy's possession, along with a reciept from Walmart. They _think_ he cashed one of my checks over at Walmart as well, and Edwards suggested "watch your bank statement or talk to Karen and tell her to watch for it; where the local merchants deal with that sort of thing on an informal basis with the victimized customer first in mind, an outfit like Walmart will just keep trying to ACH you until they get their money. " Karen agreed: "Walmart is bad like that; they will probably place you with an agency and listen to no reason at all; take this copy of the affidavit and police report so that when Walmart starts hassling you about whatever Timothy 'purchased' in your name, you can get them to call off the dogs." I will be watching my BOA account on the computer very closely for a few days. I understand under 'check 21' Walmart does not even send the actual check around any longer; just a computer tape. Meanwhile, Mikies Conoco Station and the Ace Hardware store downtown consider the matter closed, for which I am grateful. I'd like to see how Walmart decides to deal with it; I've not had a good fight with them in a long time now. My brother, the well-to-do commercial artist in Chicago said to me when he was here to visit a couple months ago, "What I have noticed is that everyone in Independence seems to be, ... so ... innocent." Well, yes and no ... there are still small town values and ideas here, everyone still gives out their phone number as four digits only, and the Timothy Garotte -style people are at a minimum. After all, our Montgomery County Jailhouse only holds at capacity about 50 prisoners, and when the County Jail gets more than 20-25 prisoners at any time, they right away start talking about building an expansion to it. And that was my weekend, how was yours? Patrick Townson ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Telephone Exchange Usage in Low-Volume States Date: 15 Aug 2005 13:40:56 -0700 In many places in the U.S. the demand for telephone exchanges is very high for a variety reasons. This has result in area code splits and overlays. NJ started off with one area code and now has nine. But some states still only have one area code. I understand some states are not growing very fast in population, indeed, some rural towns are losing population. This includes: Alaska, Idaho, Montanna, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. (Not counting some other single-code states). Given the rural/low growth aspect of places in some of these states, I was wondering if telephone service may still have some old fashioned features to it. For example, would such areas have: 1) Traditional party line service, since it's not worth the cost to upgrade lines out to people's farms? 2) Five digit dialing in some areas not well populated or served by community dial offices? I believe everything is ESS nowadays, but that pays for itself by eliminating the need for technicians to visit remote unattended switches. Probably some community dial offices have been converted to concentrators or feeders to a larger CO elsewhere. Any other comments about _today's_ rural telephone service would be appreciated. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I also understand almost everything these days is ESS ... and the days of 'community dial' (or less than seven digit dialing) has become as rare as the California Condor. Kansas is a relatively rural area; at one time we had just two area codes, 316 for the southern half of the state and 913 for the northern part. Kansas City metro area was area 816 but one could dial seven digits for either side of the state line. Then they chose to confine 913 to the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City, and other north places went to 785. A couple years ago, 316 was given to Wichita only and a few other nearby suburbs, and the rest of us in the more rural area of southeast Kansas were switched to 620. Around here, there are still party lines (not in Independence itself, but in 'rural' such as Tyro, Kansas, Caney, Jefferson, Liberty. The way they handle the billing and routing is all those towns have different prefixes but the first digit in the suffix is different in each case. Everyone in Tyro for example is 289-4xxx everyone in Caney is 289-2xxx. The only places 'big enough' to have more than one prefix are Coffeyville (251 and 252), and Independence (331 mainly, but a few cell phones in 330 and the City Offices on 332 along with Cessna Aircraft and one other company). There are some 'area-wide' prefixes used by TerraWorld and Prairie Stream Communications (712, 713, 714) but no one other than me has ever heard of those or use them except in very rare cases. TerraWorld as an ISP uses 714-0005 as its dialup for 56-K in several small towns around here; they use 712-0005 as their 56-K dialup for Coffeyville, Caney and Tyro. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Stromberg Carlson Company? Date: 15 Aug 2005 12:48:19 -0700 Would anyone know any history of this company? I know that they once made telephones, radios, and PA systems. I understand "Comdial" phones are an outgrowth of them. I presume they are long out of business. I've never seen a home audio product, but have seen commercial PA systems and telephone sets made by them in the 1950s. I get the impression they were a modest sized company in both telephones and audio products. I don't recall seeing too many of their ads in old magazines compared to other electronic outfits. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They also made motion picture projectors like Bell and Howell did. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nextray@yahoo.com Subject: FSK Signal For Voicemail on MCI Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 20:00:00 I have MCI as my local carrier and subscribe to MCI's CID and voicemail service. I recently purchased a new phone that has a voicmail indicator. However, when I have voicemail, the indicator does not work. The manual for the phone states I need a FSK signal for the indicator to work. Emails and calls to MCI have proved fruitless when I ask if MCI supports FSK for VM notification. No one seems to know what I'm talking about. Does anyone here know if MCI local service provides a FSK signal for VM? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Joseph <JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Start-Up Slashes Cost of International wireless Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 19:24:00 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 20:27:27 -0600, jared@nospam.au (jared) wrote: > Calls from wireless (USA) ... calls to wireless in most parts of the world > attract a charge to the calling party ... substantial though nowhere near > what the big USA telcos charge (from landline or wireless). Generally wireless international long distance does not differentiate between wireless and wireline terminations if only because the wireless operators generally charge a good deal more than wireline companies. Where wireline long distance companies might put a cost of only 5 cents/minute to call from the US to a UK wireline connection and 30 cents/minute to call a mobile terminated call the wireless operators will charge 29 cents/minute to call the UK with no differentiation between terminating to a wireline or wireless termination. Those who make lots of international calls have learned to use alternative long distance providers such as Gorilla Mobile <http://www.gorillamobile.com> or One Suite <http://www.onesuite.com> where they get much better international rates even to wireless terminations. ------------------------------ From: Phil McKerracher <phil@mckerracher.org> Subject: Re: How Long Can a Telephone Extension Cord Be? Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:29:07 GMT John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote in message news:telecom24.366.5@telecom-digest.org: > I think the limit is about 18,000 feet. Then you might have trouble > carrying DSL over it ... Correct, but that's the approximate limit for the total length from the switch to the telephone. Beyond that, the signal is typically attenuated too much, mainly by cable resistance, and gets buried in noise. As someone else has pointed out, you need decent cable, routed clear of sources of interference (such as power cables and cordless phones), otherwise interference will be a bigger problem than loss of signal. Phil McKerracher www.mckerracher.org ------------------------------ Date: 15 Aug 2005 23:15:59 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> Subject: Re: Start-Up Slashes Cost of International wireless Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Calls from wireless (USA) ... calls to wireless in most parts of the > world attract a charge to the calling party ... substantial though > nowhere near what the big USA telcos charge (from landline or > wireless). That's sort of a red herring, and it's definitely a topic that has been argued to death between people in North America who think that caller-pays mobile is a ripoff since the actual per-minute rates that people pay are much higher than they are here, and people in other countries who think that "free" inbound calls that overcharge their friends are great. (You can probably tell which way I feel.) It's true, US mobile carriers charge ridiculous prices for international calls. Fortunately, calling cards with reasonable international rates are widely available, and it is not hard at all to program your phone's phone book to make international calls using a calling card with a US 800 number. At this point, the mobile carriers are clearly depending on the expense account crowd who don't care what their calls cost, and probably making private reasonably priced deals with their big customers, but sooner or later they'll figure out that their overall revenue will be greater if they offer prices that will encourage their users to make more calls. R's, John ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Stock Market Ticker Tape Machines? (Reed) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:31:23 -0400 From: Michael Quinn <quinnm@bah.com> Someone wrote: > This ticker could be considered the last successful Teletype product > of the almost-all-mechanical genre. The Model 37 and Model 38 page > printers achieved few sales and never got completely debugged. > Everything after that used a lot of electronics instead of complicated > mechanisms. Only within the last 20 years did the US Navy move away from electromechanical Teletype Model 28s and variations thereof. When I was the communications officer aboard the then state-of the-art fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge in Yokosuka in 1987, we had at least 50 of those clunky noisy boat anchors. They had more more moving (and malfunctioning) parts than a British Leyland MGB, but a good teletype tech could assemble a working teleprinter blindfolded after an atomic bomb explosion. (By way of perspective, our then also state-of-art message communications processing system featured a shock hardened rack mounted 1 MByte hard drive with tape backup. We had to replace it once at a cost of $100 + K as I recall). Regards, Mike Springfield VA ------------------------------ From: Joseph <JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Classic Six-Button Keysets - Cost During 1970s Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 19:17:33 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:01:08 -0400, Michael Muderick <michael.muderick@verizon.net> wrote: > I don't know the cost of all the features, but they were a la carte. > However the hunting feature was done at the CO and there was no charge > for that as far back as I can remember. Remember, it meant another > completed call for Ma Bell, rather than a busy signal, so it was to > their advantage to give hunting away free, lest someone decide to opt > out of it. And something I've always wondered about is the use of multiple lines in countries outside of the US such as in Europe and in Asia. Often I'd see numbers advertised or on signage on the order of 123456/7 meaning that you could reach that business by dialing either 123456 or 123457. Does this mean that these step-by-step/Strowger or other electromechanical exchanges did not have trunk hunt and that this is just a North American "invention." I can't think of any other reason for listing for the public both numbers if they were sequential other than the facility for automatic trunk hunt was not available. And as far as "hunt" goes Telco (Southwestern Bell in particular) did not want to give me hunt on a residential line with sequential line numbers when I had two lines. Actually it doesn't matter if it's sequential or not. Even #5 Crossbar had "jump" hunt readily available. In any case they didn't want to provision my residential line with hunt capability. ------------------------------ From: techie@tantivy.tantivy.net (Bob Vaughan) Subject: Re: Classic Six-Button Keysets - Cost During 1970s? Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 02:31:32 UTC Organization: Tantivy Associates In article <telecom24.368.10@telecom-digest.org>, Robert Bonomi <bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com> wrote: > In article <telecom24.367.8@telecom-digest.org>, > <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote: >> Back in the 1970s, a standard fixture in almost every business (and >> even in some wealthy homes) was a key telephone. This has six buttons >> along the time so that the phone could handle more than one outside >> line, intercom lines, and HOLD function. I was wondering what basic >> key systems cost in the 1970-1975 time frame. > Commonly known as a "1A2" system. There was an earlier version known as 1A1, and apparently a 1A, 2A, and 2B before that. The 1A1 units that I have seen, were built as a complete unit, where the 1A2 systems were modular, using plug in cards for the various features. I have no information on 1A, 2A, or 2B systems. >> From what I saw, the pricing was a la carte--every little feature was >> a charge. One large organization did not bother with line lamps to >> save money. The "wink-hold" feature, where the line lamp blinked >> slowly when the line was on-hold, was optional. I never saw a system >> without a HOLD button, but apparently even that was optional. (I >> believe later systems, such as ComKey had package prices). > The button itself, and the mechanical actions related there were universal. > whether the back-end equipment recognized 'hold' and kept the circuit busy > was the 'optional' part. Took some additional cards in the card cage. The phones could be wired up without a KSU, and would operate as a regular phone, without lights, or hold. The ringers in the phones were wired to a dedicated pair, and could be strapped to any line, or to multiple lines via a diode matrix. The basic KSU had a power supply for the lamps, and a line card for each line, which handled the hold function, lamp control, and ring indication. The basis line card was a type 400. Lamp voltage was normally 10vac. The wink-on-hold feature required an interruptor, which plugged in to the KSU, and provided the pulsed lamp voltage for lines on hold. This was normally powereed by the 10vac lamp supply, although other voltages were available. I worked at a radio station where all the lamps, and interuptors were powered by 24vdc from a bank of batteries, which also supplied all the control circuitry within the studios. The PBX (Western Electric 711B step-by-step dial PBX) was powered by another bank of batteries at -48vdc. >> Anyway, would anyone know what typical pricing was in the 1970-1975 >> time frame, for the following: >> - "Hunting" feature so busy calls would go to the next line. > Handled entirely in the C.O. nothing in the 1A2 had anything to do with it. > (the CPE was irrelevant, unless you had 'trunk' circuits into a true PBX.) >> - Two lines, two keysets, line lamps that would blink on ring, but not >> wink-hold. KSU without interruptor. >> - Wink-hold feature. KSU with interruptor. >> - Basic manual intercom (push-button to sound buzzer). Sometimes there >> was a SIG button on the phone, sometimes there was a tiny panel with >> pushbuttons mounted next to the phone. KSU with a type 401 manual intercom card in place of a line card. Signaling was handled by using either a spare button on the phone, or add-on button(s) wired to extra pairs, and a add-on buzzer powered from the lamp voltage supply. The buttons in the phone could be changed from latching to momentary by removing a screw. >> - Dial intercom, one common channel, one digit automatically sounded >> desired buzzer. There were several types of dial intercoms, depending on the number of stations desired. The smaller ones could be cards in the KSU, or a seperate unit. >> - Other features of the six button keyset? You could wire the phones to do many different things. We used to use the buttons on the phones to provide contact closures to other (non-phone) devices, and the same for the lamps. >> - If a residence had a key system was the cost cheaper than a business? >> Around the 1960s the Bell System came out with a fancier system known >> as the "Call Director". Did this have any advanced features or did it >> just offer more line buttons? I know the basic Call Director shell >> was used as a PBX operator's console, but that was a different phone >> and included an additional lamp for supervision. > One of the big features of the call director was idiot lights that > showed the on/off hook status of multiple extensions. A limited number > on the phone itself (10? 15?) plus expansion sections with additional > 25(?) lines/indicators. > I don't know what equipment was behind it -- had to be considerably > more than just a 1A2 chassis, probably Centrex -- but all the call > directors I ever saw had the capability to do a two/three button > 'transfer' of an incoming call, to a specified extension. This would have been a Call Director in a PBX type environment, with a busy lamp field. The basic Call Director was simply a 1A2 type phone, with additional buttons/lamps. The earlier ones simply added additional 6 button strips, and the later ones were 10 button strips. Earlier call directors were commonly 18 or 30 buttons, and later 10, 20, and 30 buttons. There were also some custom monster phones. There were some wiring differences between the 6 button strips, and the 10 button strips. Normally each line used 3 pairs of wire, 2 for the phone line, 2 for the button (A1/A), 2 for the lamp (L/LG). For a 6 button phone/5 line phone, this would be 15 pairs, plus one for the ringer, leaving 9 spare pairs for add-on devices such as buzzers, speakerphones, etc, using a 25 pair cable. Some phones were equipped with 15 or 18 pair cables instead. For 10 lines, this would require 30 pairs, not including any pairs for ringer, or add-on buzzers, etc, but by bussing all the A1 leads together, the spare A1 leads for lines 2-5 could be reused as A leads for lines 6-9. The same trick was used with the LG leads, thus reducing the number of pairs needed to 19 (plus one for the ringer), leaving 5 spare pairs for add-ons in a 25 pair cable. Additional 25 pair groups were added for additonal 10 button rows. >> Six button keysets are rare to see today, having been replaced by more >> modern systems. Even the Bell System, before divesture, had developed >> several new lines, such as ComKey and phones with more buttons >> (identified by a larger square button with the light within it. Both >> wall and desk sets had a long row of buttons along the top of the >> phone. These were out early enough that they were made in rotary dial >> as well as touch tone. The phones with more buttons sound like late version Call Directors. I found a collectors website, with a listing of many many types of Western Electric phones, including many that most people have never seen or heard of. http://mysite.verizon.net/paul-f/we500typ.htm -- Welcome My Son, Welcome To The Machine -- Bob Vaughan | techie @ tantivy.net | | P.O. Box 19792, Stanford, Ca 94309 | -- I am Me, I am only Me, And no one else is Me, What could be simpler? -- ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Classic Six-Button Keysets - Cost During 1970s? Date: 15 Aug 2005 11:06:12 -0700 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have seen a few very elaborate and > very complex (regards wiring) six-buton sets. One of the strangest I > ever saw had six buttons (five lines plus hold) but the 'lines' were > very special purpose: from left to right, the hold button (red > plastic) was followed by 'intercom' for an open-loop arrangement (just > battery to provide talking voltage on to a similar set in a place > called 'radio station booth' and also 'box office' and 'stage left' > [anyone using one of the instruments at 'radio booth' or 'box office' > or 'stage left' could talk to or be heard by persons at the the other > instruments by going off hook]) the fourth button (or third 'line') > was 'extension 263' from the building PBX. ... Such arrangements were actually quite common. The common talk circuit light would go on if anyone was on it. Either other keyset buttons could be used to sound a particular buzzer or there was a little plate next to the phone with tiny buttons on it. We don't see it nowadays, but in old movies you'd often see a boss press a buzzer and a secretary or aide would come inside. You could use a key telephone buzzer for that arrangement, though you could of course wire one up yourself. I once inherited a desk that had a forest of disconnected push buttons underneath it. Other intercom arrangements were dial. I think they may have had some large ones needing two digits. Obviously there are a variety tradeoffs between using a key system which requires lots of cabling to each station set but no attendant vs. a PBX which requires an attendant and a switchboard. I've seen very small outfits have a switchboard and larger outfits with a key system, with every phone in a sprawling facility having the line buttons. I guess it depends on traffic, both internal and external. My uncle worked in a modest-sized factory served by a key system. A frequent use on that was the loudspeaker (intercom 6--"Joe pick up line 3"). I don't think the shop floors used the phones that much. Occassionally you'd see key systems with various colored buttons, such as blue or deep-yellow in addition to the red hold button. > They told me they had to pay Illinois Bell seventy five cents per > month for the intercom loop, which I presume was to maintain the > power supply and the wiring of same. They paid a dollar per month > for the rental of the operator-style headset and about the same > amount for the beehive lamp. PAT] I was thinking that's pretty reasonable until I realized that was in 1960 dollars. Still, it's not really that bad in that it's all maintained for you as part of the telephone. To go out and buy your own parts and build your own system would be costly in terms of time and materials. For the person wearing the headset it's a big convenience to answer/use the telephone or intercom quickly and simply. I don't know if power supplies were solid state back then but any needed maintenance was handled by the phone co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But the most ancient arrangement I ever saw was a phone with the six buttons in a separate box next to it. This one was in the clock tower at Holy Family Catholic Church on West Roosevelt Road in Chicago, back in 1972 or so. A relatively ancient wall phone (with a side ringer, yet) and the feed to it coming from a somewhat newer but still ancient side box with six round buttons on it. I was employed with someone else to get the tower clock started once again (it had been inactive for many years at that point). Taking the cover off the side ringer caused much dust and cobwebs to fall out, and a typewritten note inside the side ringer dated 1929 said 'this phone comes from the terminal box in the basement of the rectory on Hoyne Street (about 100 feet away I guess). And the side box with the line buttons had a note dated 1946 which said the pairs went to the inside terminal box in the basement of the rectory also where they appeared on 'strip 2 row 3'. I recall the actual clock (the four faces of it on each side of the tower was on the ninth floor (walking up the inside stairway) and the bells were below it on the 8th floor, the stairs and floor at that point full of pigeon 'stuff' and the bells had a note on them saying the construction of the clock and bells came from a company in 'Southwick England' ; I think it was the Southwick Clock and Bell Company. A notice on the bells said they had been installed in 1905, and that 'for proper care of the bells, the sexton must rotate the clapper one-quarter turn every _75 years_ '. Since this was in the 1970's, I guess it was about time to rotate the clapper which we did. I could find out no information about Southwick Clock and Bell Company; they were many years out of business. But some detective work got me to the 'General Time Company' offices in Chicago where the people there told me they had inherited all of Southwick's business and maintainence files many years before that. We _thought_ we had the bell chimes working once again but then they got stuck and would not quit chiming the hour over and over and over and over, about a hundred times while we climbed back up there and turned it off manually. But we got the clock mechanism working again for what it was worth. The clock motor (where the telephone was located) was in the now long since abandoned sexton's office in the tower on the fifth floor; the motor had a very long shaft on it going up through the ceilings, etc with a universal connector to turn the hands on the four sides of the clock three or four stories further up. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Urgent Help Needed With Internet Explorer IE 6.0 Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:10:53 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It was something to do with www.coolweb > and 180Search as I recall. I also took no chances and did a complete Yikes! Both of those are about as bad as they get. There's at least a couple variants of coolwebsearch that are best removed by applying a flamethrower to your hard drive -- they are *that* persistent. CWS is so nasty that it spawned a remover just for all its variants, CWShredder: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html. Another good place to look is doxdesk.com/parasite - lots of useful manual removal techniques. It's quite likely that the spyware has a reloader process running -- you will need to boot into safemode and look for odd entries in your HijackThis log. Pay careful attention to run items. If you don't get the reloader, you're wasting your time removing the spyware, because it will grow right back. A clean reinstall of windows is probably the only way to be sure you nailed it. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter <shlichter@diespammers.com> Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Last Laugh! Another Huge Money Making Idea!!! Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 00:54:32 GMT This guys says you can make thousands in just hours. His his number is 800-667-2497, E-mail is greg@gettingpaid.com. There is a conferance call number: 512-305-4663, Pin: 228862#, plus his home phone is 530-209-4956. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. 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