Table of contents:

* 1 - Re: Collect call from Rockford to Sycamore, Illinois in 1957 -
  David Scheidt <dscheidt@panix.com>

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Message-ID: 
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 14:36:45 +0000 (UTC)
From: David Scheidt <dscheidt@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Collect call from Rockford to Sycamore, Illinois in
 1957

mark thomas <sorabji@sorabji.com> wrote:

:Last month I was contacted by individuals working on a kidnap & murder
:case from 1957. Thanks to cooperation from AT&T (imagine that) they had
:already proved beyond reasonable doubt that in 1957 a payphone existed at
:a certain spot in Rockford, Illinois. A collect call made from this
:payphone has become central to establishing a timeline in which minutes,
:even seconds matter.

I doubt you'll be able to get a very good timeline.  In the best case,
placing that call wouldn't take very long.  Get the local operator,
they get the remote operator, the remote operator rings the phone,
called party answers on the first ring.  The difference between that
and the called party answering on the fifth or six ring is about 30
seconds.  If there's a delay at any step, then the time would be
longer.  There could easily be a minute of delay at any of those
steps, more if the call had to wait on a trunk from Rockford to
Sycamore.

You might be able to establish a lower bound (about a minute, I'd
think), but unless you can find the operators involved, and they
remember that call (and why would they?), you'll never know the actual
timing.


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End of telecom Digest Thu, 14 Jan 2016