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Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

The technical side of broadcasting. Think IBOC is a sham? Talk about it here! How about HDTV? Post DX reports here as well.
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Ben Zonia
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Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Ben Zonia »

Remember General Telephone, which eventually became GTE and a conglomerate, used to have telephone exchanges and systems which were way behind the times? They were way behind Bell Telephone. They still had 4 and 8 party lines into the 1960s and beyond, due to less phone lines available. People would often not consider moving to suburbs with General Telephone, and that may have even slowed their growth. Plus it was long distance to virtually every other nearby town. That was also true with Bell Telephone about long distance. People STILL call after 11 PM out of habit for the discounts. And THAT only changed when unlimited calling areas and minutes became available with cellular phones.

I remember they had telephones that were clunky looking but are now quaint. I remember Sherwood Forest near Davison had this model extension phone in the small banquet hall, where artists as famous as Bob Seger used to play in the early rocky record label eras of their careers. Yes, the 313-653 exchange was, and may still be part of the conglomerate of GTE. It's much better now.

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Last edited by Ben Zonia on Sun Jan 30, 2022 8:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tigerwings
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by tigerwings »

313-653 is a AT&T exchange, in the CO on Grand River near Greenfield.
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Ben Zonia
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Ben Zonia »

Note that I said "Ancient Telephone Facts". The 313 Area Code area North of 8 Mile Rd. changed to 810 on December 1, 1993. So if you are 28 years old or less, and perhaps several years more until you dialed a phone, you don't remember that in Davison, 810-653 was 313-653. Subsequently, Oakland County split off as Area Code 248, Macomb County split off as Area Code 586, and West and Downriver Detroit Areas and Washtenaw became Area Code 734. Similar splits occurred with 989 from 517, and 231 and 269 from 616. Just out of curiosity, how old are you? You don't have to answer. I know that similar splits occurred in Ohio, notably 567 from 419 in 2002.

I just read that in many Area Codes, you will now have to put in ALL TEN NUMBERS to make a LOCAL CALL. Not that long ago, in smaller towns you could get calls though with just the last 5 numbers. That changed to 7 numbers everywhere in the early 1990s, when many ancient dial tones in exchanges with mechanical switching, which were higher pitch, changed to a more universal dial tone.
"I had a job for a while as an announcer at WWV but I finally quit, because I couldn't stand the hours."

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km1125
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by km1125 »

Not too long ago, I ran across an old document on the basement. I tried to find it again today to post a pic in this thread, but I couldn't find it. It was a "special codes" document for the local COs, which included things like "ring back" numbers.

Do they still use those?
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Ben Zonia
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Ben Zonia »

km1125 wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 11:38 pm Not too long ago, I ran across an old document on the basement. I tried to find it again today to post a pic in this thread, but I couldn't find it. It was a "special codes" document for the local COs, which included things like "ring back" numbers.

Do they still use those?
They probably still do have codes or a number with access codes with touch tones. I used to like to dial the numbers that produced various sounds. One was a "siren", which I assume was some kind of frequency sweep to detect "illegal" extension phones. Word on the street was that you needed to disconnect the ringer so as not to be detected. If you got the make break cycle right, you could dial the phone with a code key or "tapping key", used with old school galvanometers in association with a Wheatstone bridge, to determine voltages accurately before very high impedance voltmeters were available, VTVMs and then solid state voltmeters.
"I had a job for a while as an announcer at WWV but I finally quit, because I couldn't stand the hours."

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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Deleted User 9015 »

Stupid question... Who owned telephones way back in the day? I heard that phones were owned by the phone company. Is that true? We had an old rotary dial phone that we got from my mimi when she passed. She lived in Windsor. IIRC, the phone had a thick line that went out from it that was chopped off. It seems like there were a lot of changes from then to what is left.
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Ben Zonia
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Ben Zonia »

The phone companies owned the phones. They frowned on hooking up any extension that they didn't own. They made more money when the broke up the Bell System. That's why they let it happen after fighting it for years.

Remember dial locks that supposedly kept after hours workers from using their rotary dial phones to make long distance calls?
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k8jd
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by k8jd »

When I glanced at the heading, I thought " I have a General RADIOtelephone license" !
That is from the FCC and replaced my
First class radiotelephone license, that I had to have to work in Radio broadcasting and mobile radio repair work .
Things changed a few decades ago and the FCC did not want responsibility for tech workers and the industries had to take over qualifying techs to do that work.
I had to do some catch up study and get re examined by an industry examineer and later by Motorola again .
Those exams covered all aspects and took an hour each to write,
Passed one step below the highest rating (because of a few math errors and one misread question, when the dust cleared.
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Ben Zonia
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Ben Zonia »

An old school hard wired phone line has/had about 48 VDC across the line. When the phone is off the hook, the exchange reduces it to "3-9 VDC" according to various sources. If I wanted to use my many old school phones, some of which have an intercom and alert, what would be the best voltage for turning your old phones and lines into an intercom system in this 3-9 VDC range of voltage? I also figure you could make a real PA system work, but with lower voltage, as 70.7 volts seems like too much for phone lines. You would probably also need PA type audio transformers to make up for long line losses. Any suggestions?
"I had a job for a while as an announcer at WWV but I finally quit, because I couldn't stand the hours."

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Dr. Sandi
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Dr. Sandi »

k8jd wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 10:45 am When I glanced at the heading, I thought " I have a General RADIOtelephone license" !
That is from the FCC and replaced my
First class radiotelephone license, that I had to have to work in Radio broadcasting and mobile radio repair work .
Things changed a few decades ago and the FCC did not want responsibility for tech workers and the industries had to take over qualifying techs to do that work.
I had to do some catch up study and get re examined by an industry examineer and later by Motorola again .
Those exams covered all aspects and took an hour each to write,
Passed one step below the highest rating (because of a few math errors and one misread question, when the dust cleared.
Wow, another ohlfardt with an FCC General License. Yeah, I drove from Lansing to Deeetroit to take the test at the Fed Bld back in the mid-late 70s after months of study via Cleveland Institute of Electronics. Passed the darned test too and got my shiny yellow First Class RadioTelephone License. Just in time to have the FCC downgrade operator requirements at stations. And years later, just for grins, I asked them to send me the General Radiotelephone Operator License as a consolation prize for once again screwing me and hundreds of others who had actually learned the material rather than memorizing 50 test answers.

I often tell people that "The FCC does a very important job. BADLY."

But I'm not bitter. Who me?

I have to thank my radio station owner for unknowingly letting me practice my skills on his equipment while I studied at home.
GenX lives at SuperCFL 94.5 HD4 Olympia - Streaming at http://supercfl.ddns.net:20110
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rugratsonline
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by rugratsonline »

Ben Zonia wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 11:34 amYes, the 313-653 exchange was, and may still be part of the conglomerate of GTE. It's much better now.
GTE and Bell Atlantic merged to form Verizon in 2000. Verizon would eventually sell off its non-cellular telephone services outside the Mid-Atlantic and southern New England region, mostly to Frontier Communications (which now owns the former GTE / Verizon systems in Michigan).
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Plate Cap
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Plate Cap »

I was a GTE customer when I lived just into Livingston County from Milford, and they did a good job with the phone service then. It was less expensive than MBT in Detroit, and I was happy.

Nevertheless, most insiders referred to them as 'The Great Telephone Experiment'.

Lots of former presence in Hawaii; still have buildings and right of way signs around.

Former 1st Class now GRTO licensee here too.
The box that many broadcasters won’t look outside of was made in 1969 and hasn’t changed significantly since.
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Dr. Sandi
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Re: Remembering General Telephone And Other Ancient Telephone Facts

Unread post by Dr. Sandi »

Our former GTE provider in suburban Portland is now Ziply Fiber. They bought out the questionable facilities of Frontier here in Oregon and Washington. Their service was just about adequate as Frontier. When Ziply took over, they promised that we would notice no difference. And they lived up to their word.

The mediocrity lives on unchanged with new ownership, apparently as promised. But they are still a couple slots above our former competing provider, XFinicky. We'd only had them for a couple of months when the local Comcast service went away. We tried phoning them to get updated on how long we'd be offline, but their phone machine told us we had to get in touch through their website. Great trick if you have no Internet. Since we were still in the trial period, we found them guilty and moved to FIOS service at Frontier.

It beats dialup.
GenX lives at SuperCFL 94.5 HD4 Olympia - Streaming at http://supercfl.ddns.net:20110
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