Hi, Jerome,
Very nice. Thank you. I had not seen those before.
The following video was presented in 1927 to California residents who went down to the local cinema to learn how to use the dial telephones. Although it is not related to photography, I cant resist presenting it here in the hope it will be enjoyed by some of our most respected members. I think that one of them worked in that particular field of technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmqHe7uG0dE
Very nice. Cute subscriber. I note that her 51AL desk stand telephone is apparently in a decorator color!
I especially like the frantic scene at what is now called the directory assistance desk (formerly "information").
Of course we see everything here speeded up as that film was certainly shot at 16 fr/s and we see it here either at 24 fr/s or even 30 fr/s.
I do like the score added by the transcriber!
Members who never worked in that particular field of technology may wonder how automatic dialling worked before computers and solid state electronics. That video shows the wonders of what happened when you operated the dial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZePwin92cI
Very nice treatise on the step-by-step system (known outside the Bell Telephone System as the Strowger system).
Interesting to see that the equipment in the central office is fairly old. We see that when the technician first takes the cover off a switch and works with it. We see from the closeup that it has the flat coil spring (like a clock spring), in a little brass cup, rather than the newer helical coil spring, atop the shaft.
But in that lovely little demo system, we see the newer type of spring.
That one showed who it was done manually, before dial telephones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ1fKFqt7qU
Nice review of the history of manual switching, and a nice discussion of some of the details. Wonderful to see the gesture used to make the busy test with the cord circuit plug and then the special gesture used to actually insert the plug in that jack (that gesture assures that the pull of the cord, which runs out of sight through a weighted pulley to take up any slack, does not disrupt the insertion).
Actually, AT&T has a whole archive of such videos here:
http://techchannel.att.com/showpage.cfm?ATT-Archives, but it requires the now obsolete flash plugin.
Nice. Thanks.
As a matter of fact, my extensive articles on many of these matters are now being updated and "improved". As soon as this is done I will post links to them. (The existing issues are fine, but . . .
The matter of the introduction of dial service is a very complex one. There is of course the matter of arranging things technically to facilitate the subscribers' embrace of the new modality. Then there is the "education" of the subscribers, as done in your first video.
Of course, in a large city, with numerous central offices, it was impractical to "flash cut" all of them to dial service at once. The conversion had to be progressive, and might span a decade. Thus there is the very complex matter of the inter operation of the new "dial", central offices with the existing "manual" central offices. As always, there are both technical and "human factors" issue intertwined here. This is in fact the topic of a new article I am about to publish.
Thanks again for bringing us these jewels of insight into what I have often called "the greatest story ever told" (no apologies to Christian bible scholars).
Best regards,
Doug