The Old Private Line Newsletter, Number 2, 1999
I. Introduction
II. What's Been Happening Lately?
III. Updates and Corrections
IV. The Kellog Switchboard and Supply Company
V. Interesting e-mail
VI. On Writing
VII. Best Freebie of The Month
VIII. Closing Note -- What Makes Me Happy
I. Introduction
Welcome to the second private line e-mail newsletter. Thank you very much for subscribing. I am still working on making the newsletter appear the same in all mail programs. Yahoo, Hotmail, and other free accounts may have strange line breaks. Forward this newsletter to your regular mail account if you have one and these breaks should disappear.
This newsletter comes out about every month. Check out my home page every week or so for more current information -- I'm putting up little tibits, links, and comments every few days.
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II. What's Been Happening Lately?
Work continues on the wireless article, with an emphasis on standards and network elements. The Wireless folder on my hard drive now takes up 5.9 megs, contains 99 images and holds 30 separate pages. Some of those files and images haven't been posted but will be soon. The pages are all unfinished. I will redouble my effort to produce a one-page guide to wireless this week, hyperlinked to the main article. It may not be completely linked because I don't yet have a page for every topic. Still, I am working on it. Check out the URL below. Perhaps you can find something useful among the rough drafts:
http://www.TelecomWriting.com/PCS/PCS.htm
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III. Updates and Corrections
We discussed telephone cord history in the last newsletter. With the help of Cliff Kennedy of Roseville Telephone Company, we now know when spiral telephone cords were introduced. Here's the new paragraph in the history series:
"In 1938 retractile, spring, or spiral cords were introduced into the Bell System. A single cotton bundle containing the handset's four wires were fashioned into a spiral. This reduced the twisting and curling of conventional flat or braided cords. Spiral cords were popular immediately. AT&T's Events in Telecommunication History reported that introduction began in April, with Western Electric providing 6,000 cords by November. Still, even with W.E. then producing 1,000 cords a week, the cords could not be kept in stock."
The hyperlinked text is at:
http://www.TelecomWriting.com/
TelephoneHistory3/History3.html
http://www.TelecomWriting.com/
TelephoneHistory2/History2.html
John Wong of Australia continues to send me more information on transistor operation as well as supplying excellent links:
" . . .the site I'm referring to is actually very good - it ought to be, Lucent is the piece of the old AT&T that contains Bell Labs, inventors of the transistor. Here is their URL:
http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/heritage/transistor/
April 21, 2001: Link now dead!:-(
Most of the stuff there is fairly low level like what you need. There is also a section at a slightly more technical level, like what I just wrote, at
http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/heritage/
transistor/brinkman/index.html
April 21, 2001: Link now dead!:-(
There it explains that they tried to invent FETs first but only invented the point-contact and junction transistors accidentally. FETs didn't work for another 10 or 20 years after they were able to make silicon much purer.
Also the IEEE website has some interesting interview transcripts with the original pioneers. These really give some insights into how strange and exciting telecommunications was in the old days.
http://www.ieee.org/history_center/oral
_histories/transcripts/sears.html
Someone explains that semiconductors (copper oxide rectifiers) were a COMPLETE MYSTERY. They worked but they didn't have a clue why. Another is:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history
_center/oral_histories/transcripts/espenschied11.html
which is about long distance telephony, coaxial cables, loading coils, multiplexing etc. Lots of other good stuff there."
(Note from Tom: I've read several of these IEEE oral histories and they are excellent.)
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IV. The Kellog Switchboard and Supply Company
Mr.Farley,
I have read your excellent articles on the history of the telephone. I am a 20 year guy with AT&T and you hit the last years of the Bell System right on the head.
I was wondering if you could aim me in the right direction to find information on the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company. I picked up a couple of their old wooden phones at a yard sale, and I have to admit I have never heard of that company before. I see a lot of their old phones for sale on the web, and I have been collecting WECO phones for years.
Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
David Mikols
Kellog was another supplier to independents. They folded into ITT in 1953. I hadn't done any real research on Kellogg until I got David's e-mail. Turns out Milo Gifford Kellogg was a true telephone pioneer, whose chief contribution was not with station apparatus but with large, expandable manual switchboards. His major accomplishment was the so called divided-multiple switchboard, of which two were built. One was sold to the Cuyahoga Telephone Company of Cleveland, Ohio and the other to the Kinloch Telephone company of Saint Louis. The Cleveland installation boasted 9,600 lines, with an ultimate capacity of 24,000! For a plug switchboard that is pretty amazing. Automatic switching doomed these large projects.
A "graduate engineer and accomplished circuit designer", Kellogg began his career in 1870 with Gray and Barton, equipment manufacturers for Western Electric. He wound up with more than 125 patents to his name, some of them quite significant, a remarkable accomplishment. He was also quite political, successfully winning suits against Bell and delaying other Bell actions to his benefit. I'll be researching this a little more this week and then adding it to the telephone history series. In the meantime, check out this great timeline on the company's history, supplied by David Mikols:
http://www.cortelco.com/timeline.htm
April 21, 2001: Link now dead!:-( Try the link below:
http://www.cortelco.com/html/history.php3
Ocotber 10, 2003: Link dead again! Who are these people?:-( Try the search engine at the top of this page.
Please-mail me if any of you have something to contribute about Kellogg.
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V. Interesting e-mail
I get lots of great e-mail from all over the world. Here are just a few. I respond to it all, even if I can't help. . .
Dear Tom,
I am researching an article on an early form of radio called the "pleasure telephone" used in Budapest in the 1880s and in Leeds, Yorkshire (England) in the 1880s. "The newspapers of Buda-Pesth persistently boycotted the invention on its introduction" but later realised it served only to "whet the appetite of the listening audience". I can find no reference to it anywhere but the Strand Magazine 1889.
Have you ever heard of it? I would appreciate any reply.
Yours faithfully, Colin Coffey
I wrote back that I hadn't heard of it but that I would look around. Colin wrote back later to say he had found out more . . .
Dear Tom
I thank you for your prompt reply. I found out a little more. The system was also known as the "electrophone" which first was used in Leeds(?) in 1880 by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) and later in London in one-offs for the Prince of Wales.
It seemed very widespread in Budapest in the 1890s. The company was a commercial concern which was wound up in the 1920s after Marconi's Wireless was started. I enclose an 1890s line drawing of children listening to it.
Yours, Colin Coffey
The pleasure telephone is more a microphone than a telephone. I've posted the picture to TelecomWriting.com You can look it up here:
'
Hi Tom,
Could you please point me in the right direction on my research? I work for the Colorado Historical Society and am researching where and what type of telephones would have been installed in a fairly affluent household in Denver in 1920-24. I have been unable to find who the company was at that time or what type of system was used. We want to add period phones to one of our house museums and want to get it right. The house is in downtown Denver and at the restoration time period had 4-5 family members living in it with at least 2 servants (cook, maid and probably also a driver). Any help would be great.
Your history is wonderful and I've learned a lot reading it.
Thank you,
Dan Hupp
Hello, Tom
Hi there, remember me? I haven't dropped off the planet but needed to postpone my sound art piece with cell phones. I think to make matters simpler on myself I'm going to just build radios and stick them into empty cell phone shells. I am however, devising a piece of music/theatre that will use a voicemail menu system on a new piece of software I just got for Mac called "bonzer." At any rate, I wanted to say hello, and hope that we can maybe discuss phones and art more at length some day. Also, one quick question if you don't mind: How can I tell if I have an analog or a digital phone line?
And here's a piece of pure crap I was sent recently that you may hopefully enjoy: What do prisoners use to call each other? Cell phones.
Thanks,
KK
Hi,
I am a historian looking for information about telephone pole date nails. I have been searching all means available, but have come up empty. Do you possibly have any information or know where I can go from here?
I'm researching how and when the telephone system came into southern California in the early 1930s, since I have date nails from those dates.
I'd truly appreciate anything you can give me.
Thanks,
Petei McHenry
Tom --
I'm looking for the author of some old shareware that went by the name "Private Line" back in the early 90's -- wonder if you know anything about it. I never registered (confession!) and it garbled all of my files. I'd like to make restitution and decrypt them -- might be able to do this without actually finding the author of the software, but I'd rather do the right thing.
Can you help me?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
J Graham
Tom
hi Wazz up?nothin here just at school writing to you cuz we have a
project to do and we're at your site how exiting tom i mean like WOW this is great toms website and that all!!!
From Victoria,Nikki,Renee
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V. On Writing
Many people want to write better but they don't know how. Here are some rules to follow. Use these and your writing will improve. I follow these rules when I have the time. When I don't have the time, when something must get written quickly, the piece goes out the door or on the web despite its flaws. But I know better, even when I don't follow them. I am gradually incorporating them into my thinking, putting more and more of them into my first drafts, rather than my third or fourth revisions.
You'll write better if you understand George Orwell's Politics and The English Language, a short and practical essay about truth and writing well. It applies to novels, essays, technical writing, travel pieces, and anything else that uses the English language to communicate an idea. Although dated and somewhat difficult, I think it is the best writing on writing. I've annotated it at this site. Click here to go there.
Orwell presents a common observation but draws a powerful, unexpected, and hopeful conclusion from it:
"Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."
He presents a short rules list in the essay, the text expanding and illustrating his points. I've reproduced the list and added some comments.
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Too little too late, right as rain, knock on wood, there's no tomorrow, till the cows come home, are all worthless literary devices. They no longer invoke a concrete thought or image. They are instead a fuzzy shorthand for the real thought. Exactly what does knock on wood mean? Let's hope for the best? Good luck? Let's hope nothing goes wrong? Then write one of those sentences instead of using a cliché that does the writing for you. Write what you mean.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Please! And never use a long sentence where a short one will do. Limit sentences to 25 words and you'll limit your damage.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
"As a machine should have no unnecessary parts, so should a sentence have no unnecessary words." You can follow this rule more easily by following the next -- it automatically cuts out words.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
This is extremely important. Here are passive voice phrases and sentences along with my active voice corrections:
a. "Scientists used to think . . ."
Scientists thought
b. "began taking shape . . ."
took shape
c. "The rule making groups that produce standards are many."
Many rule making groups produce standards.
d. "One project was described as improving the habitat for ruffled grouse . . ."
One project described improving ruffled grouse habitat
e. "A spokesman for China's central bank told Reuters . . ."
A China central bank spokesman told Reuters
f. "Since the architecture of the application platform is modular, each component in the system can be independently evolved and upgraded.'"
Since the application platform's architecture is modular, each system component can be independently evolved and upgraded.
g. "The system is managed by means of encrypted communications."
Encrypted communications manages the system.
h. "Subscriber-line maintenance functionality provides a mechanism for detecting and locating faults that have an adverse effect on traffic in the system."
The Subscriber-line maintenance function detects and locates faults that adversely effect system traffic.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Or abbreviations; at least when starting an article. You can lapse into abbreviations after using the full name several times.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
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VII. Freebie Of The Month:
Great images for your website or personal use are available at:
http://image.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avncgi
For information junkies, students, and parents helping students, check out the Encyclopaedia Britannica online. This encyclopaedia is as excellent as the CD ROM based encyclopaedias are pathetic. Full text of all articles, although not all the charts and pictures. They have a great trial offer. Use it free for a week, no demographic information required for the trial. You just need a valid e-mail account. I wound up subscribing, although I prefer my mid-70s Britannica set (30 volumes) for certain things. If you can, buy a somewhat recent set _and_ subscribe to the online service.
$5.U.S. a month or $60 U.S. a year.
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VIII. Closing Note -- What Makes Me Happy
I get quite a bit of e-mail from students and parents working on history or science projects. Many write nice notes like the following. Nothing can make a writer happier:
Dear Tom,
My daughter and I were researching information for her science project (how telephones work) when we came across your web page. We have found it to be informative and filled with information we haven't found in other places. I have been involved with telephony for more than 20 years and know how telephones and switches work but never really knew why.
Thanks for the information.
Bob
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See you soon! Thanks, Tom Farley
