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Posted by Wes Leatherock on August 10, 2008, 9:18 am
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On 8/8/2008 12:01:47 PM Central Daylight Time hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
[ ... ]
> For instance, some pay phones were pre-pay, some were post-pay.
> Also, they maintained stocks of non-dial phones for areas with
> manual service and certain PBX extensions (such as in a plain
> motel.)
In the late 1940s or early 1950s I had an occasion to use a pay
phone in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a fair-sized manual exchange.
It had manual pre-pay service...similar to a dial office. You
put your money in the slot, the operator said "Number, please,"
took your number and dropped off. From that point on everything
proceeded just like you had dialed the number on a pre-pay phone.
Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com
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Posted by on August 10, 2008, 12:48 pm
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> > For instance, some pay phones were pre-pay, some were post-pay.
> > Also, they maintained stocks of non-dial phones for areas with
> > manual service and certain PBX extensions (such as in a plain
> > motel.)
> In the late 1940s or early 1950s I had an occasion to use a pay
> phone in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a fair-sized manual exchange.
> It had manual pre-pay service...similar to a dial office. You
> put your money in the slot, the operator said "Number, please,"
> took your number and dropped off. From that point on everything
> proceeded just like you had dialed the number on a pre-pay phone.
To clarify for our younger viewers:
Pay telephone had two types: In cities there was the pre-pay, in which
you deposited your coin to get a dial tone. If your call wasn't
answered your coin was returned. This required the phone have to a
coin-holding area and a switchable opening to either collect the money
or return it to the customer. A special signal from the CO operated
that opening.
In rural areas there was a simpler phone known as post pay. You got a
dial tone, dialed the number, and waited for answer. If someone
answered, you then promptly inserted your coin. There was no holding
area, your coin went directly into the collection box. The was a
polar relay inside the phone so that when the coin was dropped the
relay would connect your transmitter circuit so you could talk, at the
end of the call, polarity was reversed to reset the relay.
The post pay was a simpler phone and had simpler CO interfaces.
My point of all this was that the Bell System had to maintain two
distinct types of pay phones--that it was not a universal inventory.
Further, phones had to be maintained in inventory or modified to have
a dial or a dial blank on them; another separate task.
Thus, maintaining or modifying dials to be 20 pps would not be a big
deal.
***** Moderator's Note *****
The "specal signal" from the CO was either -130 volts from tip to
ground (Coin Return Battery), or +130 volts from tip to ground (Coin
Collect Battery). Students at M.I.T. implemented a workaround, called
a "T", witch assured that Coin-Collect Battery would be changed so
that the phone received Coin-Return Battery instead.
This device was call a "T" because it was one of a triumvirate of
weapons that the kids employed in their never-ending battle against
boredom and Ma Bell: the "Black Box", code named "Agnew", and the
"Blue Box", code named "Spiro". The three weapons were employed so
effectively that Western Electric developed the "Fortress" model of
pay phone, which would lock up and become innoperative if the CO talk
battery (-48 & Ground) was reversed, thus preventing the use of "T"
rectifiers. Local Testmen had a lot of trouble with them: they had to
put talk battery on the pair before attempting to collect a stuck
coin, or the station totalizer wouldn't "home", which locked the
phone. Unfortunately, not all the cable test tags were consistent:
some had "tipover" errors in their wiring, which caused the Fortress
phones to lock when the testman applied talk battery.
The ESS killed the Agnew, and SS7 caused the (long mourned) demise of
the Spiro. Ma Bell wouldn't let us play with her toys anymore, except,
of course, for those who still use Red Boxes. Red Boxers have a
standing joke: when asked what a payphone call costs, they answer
"It's always Five Cents".
Bill "When you get that first call from Homeland Security, you know you've
arrived" Horne
Temporary Moderator
Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never
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