[Myrddin]

If the Bell system had not been broken up, I would still be employed there. That was my initial game plan. It was very well run with everything engineered with much care. A visit to a modern day central office will show the severe drop in quality that has ensued since the breakup. As a former central office equipment engineer, I really appreciated the care AT&T/Western Electric put into the office engineering.

[cva66snipe]

If the Bell system had not been broken up, I would still be employed there. That was my initial game plan. It was very well run with everything engineered with much care. A visit to a modern day central office will show the severe drop in quality that has ensued since the breakup. As a former central office equipment engineer, I really appreciated the care AT&T/Western Electric put into the office engineering.

I got to see the old mechanical switching Central Offices before ESS. It amazed me how may dad would look at an IBM card feom the trouble recorder and walk through two stories of bay after bays of relays to the right place. He taught me how to read them and since he worked evenings I got to learn quite a bit even though I went into another profession.

He started out in 1946 taking out the old crank phones and installing new at that time rotary phones on 8 party lines. When they put in 4-A he went to school and went inside. When it cut over he went to Special Services back outside climbing. The climbing instructor got a site to see watching an old timer go up :>}

He did do one thing rather halarious. When I was in the Navy our phone line was on the old paper wrapped rural wire. It was causing problems and making the phone ring off the wall. I was supposed to be flying home that night and he couldn't get it to trip ringing. There was a plane crash also but I was on another plane. He had been after them to bury a new cable but they didn't do it. When the phone starting ringing that night he pulled it off the wall and busted it into pieces and put them on his bosses desk the next day. That didn't work so he went to the state Public Service Commission. We got the first ESS Central Office in Tennessee and new cable.

[metesky]

My late f-i-l ran the payroll dept. at Western Electric's Merrimac Valley works for years. When the original breakup came, he predicted that within thirty years they would creep back together.

When we were first married (1967) my wife pretty well ran the secretaries in the engineering dept.

"Hello Charlie!"

[j_tull]

If the Bell system had not been broken up we'd still be paying $0.50/minute for daytime long distance.