I really like this project for the aesthetics of the old switchboard. And the guy's blog has many pretty pictures. http://blog.lazerwalker.com/switchboard/2016

I really like this project for the aesthetics of the old switchboard. And the guy's blog has many pretty pictures. http://blog.lazerwalker.com/switchboard/2016/02/21/switchboard-part-1.html http://blog.lazerwalker.com/switchboard/2016/02/21/switchboa... What I find funny, though, is his astonishment on the huge amount of wiring, e.g. he writes... “There’s a bit of a mystery here. Conceptually, you’d assume this is very simple: it’s a switch with a neutral state and two other possible states. You could easily represent this with only 3 pins. And yet there are two separate physical mechanisms, one for each direction.” What seems to be hard to fathom for people growing up with today's tech where every single button we press is connected to a small microcontroller with more computing power than what was available on the whole planet in 1920: there is no second level of logic, except maybe one of two relays. And the only reasonable way to build the required functionality, in these days, was to add a few additional cogs, springs, beams, ... in each switch. And route 10 additional wires to it! Having a whole rack of relays just to save on complexity to use simpler switches would have been completely absurd then. Nowadays, in contrast, we like to keep mechanical and wiring simple. And just complement it with software to implement the details.