sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Antique Telephones Arthur P. Blooms Telephone Museum

Arthur is in the process of building a Telephone Museum out in his barn is Shelter island, NY. I'll let him speak for himself:


"Here are a few photos of the telephone museum I'm working on in my barn. .....It's a 200-line rotary Western Electric 701B PBX Ten feet long by 8 feet high, by 3 feet thick. Weighs 3100 pounds. Barely does what a Mitel SX200 will do, by comparison. Dial, ring, answer, talk, hangup. That's about it as far as features. Based upon a design from 1892, examples were still in use in 1992. This one was built in 1964.

(#20) Top half of Miscellaneous Relay Rack (MRR) showing (from top) fuse panel, alarm and test bell circuitry, ringing ballast lamps, voltmeter and ammeter, pull-out fuses for switch shelves, and ground buss.




(#21) Lower half of MRR showing ringing machine transfer circuit, and two Holzter-Cabot motor generators that supply ringing, dial tone, and busy tone. At the bottom is a Lorain 110 Vac to 48Vdc supply, providing 10 Amps to run the whole switch..



(#24) Me, in front of the L&CO relays and a few linefinders that have been put on the shelf. The bottom shelf is waiting for its connectors to be installed. The wiring block at the top is being connected to the MDF with (2) 100-pair T/R cables.



(#25) Close-up of the line circuit wiring in progress. 200 Tips and Rings are being installed using a spin-wrap gun. Tedious.



(#26) Other end of the output cables, terminated on 66M50 blocks on a backboard.



(#27) Aisle pilot lamps. Red is fuse alarm, yellow is permanent signal (ROH) green is release magnet alarm, and white is power failure/transfer.



(#28) Sign done by the neighbor's daughter. Primitive, but cute. (the sign, not the kid)



(#29) Closeup of "triple" cable showing T/R/S leads.




Enjoy,

Sam

Hey, finally a picture of the famous Arthur! Nice looking setup too!

So whens the grand opening so we can all be there?

Jeff, that's not me. It's my stunt double.

Merritt, c'mon down and bring your fishing pole and your spin wrap gun. Have you visited the telephone museum up there in Maine? I hear it's pretty cool.

Sam, thanks, as always, for helping post the pix. As soon as they invent a rotary dial camera, I'll be able to do it myself.

Did you put those repeat coils I sent you into the museum yet?

Not yet. They will be in the tie-line display.

Found this very interesting, any updates Arthur?

Well, I intended to put heat in the barn/museum, but the money got tight this winter. Work resumes in the spring. My subscribers, in the mean time, are using dial tone from my Asterisk C*NET box.

Click to learn about C*NET (pronounced "see net")

Arthur, can we dial into your system?

I'd really love to hear ringback, etc. A friend of mine has a couple of voIP analog telephone adapters hooked to C*NET's network and has a custom ringback sound... It's fun to call!

The gateway is 952-652-7000 and then you can dial the country code and the 7 digits.

I won't post Arthur's info directly, but if you go to the TCI home page, https://www.telephonecollectors.org/ , you will find a link to C*NET - The VOIP based Collector's Network. From there you can find all the info you need on joining the network, accessing it from a public portal, and a listing of members and their numbers.