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In the days of Strowger switches, their clacking racket would have blasted you from the bike ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikip
by B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
In the days of Strowger switches, their clacking racket would have blasted you from the bike ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch
- Angostura 10y agoI doubt it. I walked past a large strowger exchange building as a school kid every day in the UK heard nothing from outside.
- jxramos 10y agoWild stuff, never knew about these old mechanisms. Doesn't seem too loud however. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNKLuM8yY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNKLuM8yY8
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoA room full of those, piled up in columns/towers seven or eight feet tall, gets pretty loud. But yeah, as mentioned, a building with decent insulation can contain the noise. A flimsy cottage, probably not.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoTry https://archive.org/details/EastLangtonUax13TelephoneExchange https://archive.org/details/EastLangtonUax13TelephoneExchang... That's a standard UK rural exchange. Capacity 100 lines! The last few decomissioned went, in full working condition, to museums. Background noise is the motors for the tone generator, probably the cable compressor too. The louder noises are the call routing and reset. Background noise would normally be a fair bit louder - I'm guessing he had mic right up against the rack for this. Or a town exchange: https://youtu.be/xUOh9fCSgqw https://youtu.be/xUOh9fCSgqw Towns had much larger exchanges, and they were loud. Probably enough to have hearing loss if you worked there. Only visited one once, decades ago. Also had a distinctive smell - machine oil, burnt electrics (50v), solvents. Lovely.
- PavlovsCat 10y agoWhat an irony that this was invented to prevent fiddling about with things, considering how fouled up it all got.