[OT] NH Telephone Museum

[Ben Scott]

On 11/4/07, Ted Roche <tedroche at tedroche.com> wrote:
> Maddog, Ben Scott and I also made a morning fieldtrip to the New
> Hampshire Telephone Museum in Warner [1],

  I just wanted to give a few more words on this.  This was a really
cool place for geeks of a historical bent (such as myself).  It's not
very big, but it's very cool.  We were privileged to be given a tour
by "Dick" Violette, former chairman of the former Merrimack Telephone
Company.

  There was a huge range of telephone sets, from the very earliest to
the fairly recent. Some of the oldest telephone sets there were
complete with wood cabinets, screw terminals, hand-cranked ringer
magnetos, and their own talk batteries (pre-dating the idea of central
office battery).  Looking at the design of this early stuff was
fascinating.  There were also candle sticks, early dial phones, early
pay phones, and countless "unusual designs".

  One candle stick phone (circa 1920, I think) had a small coin box
attached to it, for guests using it to make calls.  (Payments worked
on the honor system.)  Back then, Ma Bell was providing telephone
service "to the subscriber and the subscriber's household".  If the
operator heard someone else's voice (remember, back then, all calls
were manually switched by the operator), an extra charge of five cents
was billed for that call.  Talk about draconian Terms Of Service
enforcement!

  There was old test equipment, and old install/repair equipment.
Things have come a long way.  Solder splices, lead sheathed cables,
paper wrapping without color codes, test gear with no dial -- only a
lamp you had to judge the brightness of.  Old military phone
equipment.  A working pair of telegraph keys, anachronistically wired
to four new Duracell D cells.

  Old telephone switch boards.  Wooden desks, with a riser full of
flaps and plugs.  When the subscriber cranked the magneto, the flap
would drop, exposing a jack.  The operator would pull a plug cord from
the desk, plug it in, and press a finger switch (two for each plug
cord set) to ask for the number.  You know the rest.

  The really cool part was that some of this was *working*.  Dick sat
down at one of the switch boards and instructed me to crank a
particular telephone.  Sure enough, the bell at the switch board rang
and the flap dropped.  Then he plugged in another jack, turned his
crank, and another set across the hall rang.

  But for me, the real topper was a working Strowger stepper switch
rack, with two rotary phones wired to it.  You could dial seven digits
and watch the mechanisms rotate and slide as they found a line,
selected the exchange, and then the subscriber number.  Assuming you
dialed the right number, the other phone would ring.  I find these
electromechanical predecessors to modern digital systems absolutely
fascinating.

  So if you're a geek like me, who appreciates not just the
state-of-the-art, but the history of how it came to be, this is worth
the trip.

  http://www.nhtelephonemuseum.com/

-- Ben