0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (03/23/91)
In article <Digest v11, iss211>, Jim E. Dunne <motcid!void! dunne@uunet.uu.net> describes an old North Electric branded telephone he has questions about. Probably one of the more "fun" antiques any of us in this forum has is some very old telephone, mainly because most of them can be made into a working antique. I've even met people who managed to get the answering service version of a 555 PBX and hooked up a line or two, placing the thing in their living room, because the wood cabinet was made of such fine lumber that it could be refinished and made to look very nice; having its drops operate and its dial work added an element of fun to it. Jim, however, has a problem making the ringer operate on a Bell-style 20 Hertz straight-ringing line, saying the ringer is marked "50 Cycles." That frequency would be one from a non-Bell company that used the party-line ringing method called "decimonic" ringing, where the frequencies used were multiples of 10 Hertz, rather than the multiples of 16-2/3 Hertz used in the more common "harmonic" party-line ringing of independent Telcos. Decimonic ringing was most commonly used in the private telephone systems operated by railways along their tracks. However, in general, the basic ringer of all those old phones is electrically much the same. The item that made the difference was the value of the capacitor connected in series with the ringer in most. The ringer capacitor should be readily visible as a replaceable item once one opens the phone up, and a capacitance of the order of three times that found in the 50 cycle ringer ought to tune it much closer to 20 Hertz. The North Electric Company long ago shifted its product specialty to telephone power equipment, but it can still be found in Galion, Ohio. So long as the accountants have yet taken over completely, and all the "old-timers" haven't been fired, you can probably find a soul there who's interested in communicating with you about that phone. Jim then asks: > My question is, who were the phone manufacturers of old? I'm > sure that Western Electric made the phones for the Bell system, but > who made the phones for the "other" companies? And how/when did these > other service providers, and their hardware makers, come on the scene? There's just a whole raft of stories and even intrigues relating to who made the phones and how it got that way in the early days of telephony in the U.S. In fact, Bell's original patent claims were sufficiently disputed by several parties. The most notable of these was the caveat filed the same day by one Elisha Gray [of Chicago, for our proud Moderator to take note]. Gray didn't press his telephone to a working model for some years until it appeared that Bell's backers would make a success of the business. Most interesting is that Gray's financial backer was the Western Union Telegraph Company, which called its venture the American Speaking Telephone Company. Among other curious happenings was that Western Union was reputed to have paid Gray some $50,000 to $100,000 for his patent claims, have bought out several others, and refused an offer from Bell interests to buy the Bell patent for $100,000. Of course, in 1878, $100,000 was a considerable sum of money, and the Bell interests sued Western Union as owners of American Speaking Telephone for patent infringment, a suit that dragged on for some years ... with the interesting settlement result that in return for Bell paying WUTCo 20 percent of telephone rentals for seventeen years and buying out WTUCo's American Speaking Telephone, the two agreed to stay out of each other's business. It's doubtful the U.S. Federal government would have permitted such an agreement in later eras. One drawback that both the Bell and Gray patent plans suffered was that they both used a variation on the fabled cup of acid that Bell spilled on his trousers. What Gray had done (with WUTCo backing) was to use Thomas Edison's contribution of the carbon-granule-filled transmitter, making telephones at his firm called Gray & Barton, selling the manufacture to WUTCo's American Speaking Telephone. In 1882, after settling with WUTCo, American Bell purchased Gray & Barton, changing its name to Western Electric. In the period through about 1888, Bell vigorously fought off several conflicting patents of others, and set about on a rather Hitler-like campaign of object lessons. Printed history reveals that in numerous cases, the Bell people obtained judgments in local courts, then proceeded to enforce them by raiding non-Bell exchanges, ripping out the equipment, and then burning it on public display. Nevertheless, non-Bell telephone companies popped up in many markets too small to be of interest to Bell. Some number of these had equipment purchased from American Speaking Telephone in the Gray & Barton years. One other source in this period was the Baxter Company in Utica, New York. March, 1893 was when Bell lost their patent protection on the telephone transmitter, while January, 1894 was the expiration of Bell's receiver patent. In the interim, Bell had bought every "telephone" patent in sight, many of which had no utlimate use or value. But among these was one for a transmitter filed by Emile Berliner in 1877. The Berliner patent wasn't granted until 1891, and Bell had hoped to ride on that one, but it had already drawn the interest of the U.S. Attorney General, who filed suit on behalf of the public, saying the Patent Office had delayed its issuance for the monopoly convenience of the Bell interests. Betting that the Attorney General would win, a number of non-Bell "independent" telephone manufacturers popped up. Among the earliest of these was reported to be the American Electric Telephone Company of Kokomo, Indiana. American Electric was actually the reincarnation of what had been the Missouri Telephone Manufacturing Company of St. Louis that had been forced out of business by Bell's vigorous patent prosecution. American Electric moved its factory to Chicago, then dissolved itself into two successor firms: Keystone Electric of Pittsburgh and Northwestern Telephone Manufacturing of Milwaukee. But names we now know began to appear, and at least one researcher names an Ohio firm, Drumheller & North of Ohio, that first got into business by repairing Bell telephones for the Cleveland (Bell) Telephone company in 1884. Within a few years, this expanded into the North Electric Company, making equipment for the Erie Telephone & Telegraph Company, which was a Bell licensee. At the time, North could not manufacture transmitters of receivers, and Erie Telephone rented these from Bell for use in the North manufacture. North provided at least two notable innovations to the telephone industry. First, North made the first Private Automatic Exchange for the Galion, Ohio High School in 1920. Its name, PAX, is the source of this term in the non-Bell telephone industry. In 1922, North followed the PAX with the first Automatic Toll Switchboard built for the Northern Ohio Telephone Company. Later, in 1938, F.R. McBerry of North Electric was credited as inventor of the Wire-Spring relay, using a reed armature. Anyone who worked on American relay-vintage telephone equipment knows how basic the Wire-Spring relay became to telephony in the U.S. Along the way, one H.W. Boswau of North Electric was credited with having built a push-button dialing switching system in 1931, but it never reached manfacture. From this, one can see how North Electric provided advances wanted not only by telephone companies but also the railways they sold so much to. And you, Jim, can see how much history resides in the telephone you now own. The way it likely wound up in the hands of a GTE company is that GTE went on a binge of buying small non-Bell companies in the 1950's and 1960's. The one you found that phone in was probably one supplied by North Electric. North went through several wide financial swings over the years, and was owned for a time by L.M. Ericsson when LME wanted to manufacture and sell its crossbar switches in the U.S. (not offering the technology to Stromberg-Carlson), and this resulted in the North NX-1 and NX-2 crossbar exchanges that enjoyed some popularity. Finally, LME sold North out to United Utilities, which made a third-league copy of Western Electric of North, with its most visible entity today being the North Supply Company (not a bad place to buy telephone equipment if you want to, by the way). But, what of the others? My source material does not state the beginnings of the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company of Chicago, but it was one of the most innovative of developers in the late 1800's, and by 1901 its founder, Milo G. Kellogg, had to leave a successful company in Chicago in 1901 for his health, moving to California. He left his company in the hands of his brother-in-law, who promptly sold out to the Bell interests. Behind this lies a story in which many claim Bell proceeded on a route of killing Kellogg, to fill the non-Bell companies with poor product, and simultaneously sue Kellogg over a variety of patent issues, then control a weak defense. This story also seems to bear truth, in that Kellogg employees who held some minority shares first wrote a letter of appeal to the President of AT&T, and getting no reply, filed a lawsuit and won an injunction that required AT&T to give up its ownership in Kellogg and enjoined Bell interests from interfering with the management or control of the Kellogg company in perpetuity. From that point, in 1906, Kellogg grew to be one of the major names supplying telephone equipment to non-Bell companies. Kellogg, in fact, had many innovations to its credit before Bell did, among these the "Grabaphone," a hand-held transmitter-receiver some years before Western Electric's first one in 1926 ... and the Kellogg phone was truly superior by 1933. Kellogg remained a power in the non-Bell industry until ITT bought it in 1952, and Kellogg, as many others, lost market when GTE began buying companies and feeding business to its own manufacturing subsidiary, Automatic Electric. GTE simply decided in the 1950's to copy things that Bell had so successfully clamped controls on a half-century earlier. If you were around then, you could have bought all the non - Automatic Electric telephones you could carry for 50 cents each from any newly-acquired GTE company. Many of us did, and hooked them up at home to become "criminals" in GTE's eyes. There wasn't much love lost between the public and GTE, either. Automatic Electric, which GTE gained control of as part of its 1950's plans, had roots reaching clear back to the 1891 invention of Almon B. Strowger, and through several incarnations at Chicago, then Baltimore, then back to Chicago, Its name over these changes were variations on the name, "Automatic." The last one was Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company, replaced finally by the name Automatic Electric Company in 1901. It finally became the Automatic Electric Company (Illinois) based on Van Buren Street in Chicago [Chicago once again!] until GTE flooded it with so many orders in the 1950's that AECo had to move to suburban Northlake, Illinois, until GTE killed it in the 1980's, moving its remains to Phoenix. Throughout its history, Automatic Electric pioneered some significant improvements to dial telephony, not the least of which was what many telephone men regarded as the smoothest rotary dial ever seen. In that proud heyday of Automatic Electric, the name of Strowger was memorialized in the Strowger Automatic Toll Ticketing system, patented in 1925, but unsellable beause AT&T had by then monopolized the long distance business. A few SATTs were sold in Europe, but when GTE needed an automatic toll ticketing system in the 1950's for its part of DDD, they pulled the original SATT drawings out and spread what was by then a really unreliable asset though GTE companies across the U.S. Old Almon B. probably rolled several times in the grave he'd been sleeping in since 1906. Alfred Stromberg and Androv Carlson joined in business making switchboards in Chicago [Chicago again!] in 1894. Stromberg and Carlson had been employees of Chicago Bell and knew how to make a sound-powered transmitter that Bell could not assail in patent suits, so they managed a peaceable, prosperous existence out of reach of the Bell wolves that killed most of the others. Among things that Stromberg and Carlson contributed to the industry was the first real telephone set that was complete on a desktop on its own, including magneto and ringer, instead of mounting on the wall. But, one of their best clients, Rochester Home Telephone Company purchased control and moved Stromberg-Carlson to Rochester, NY to protect their source of supply from Bell predators. Stromberg prospered in early days by filling contracts for Kellogg clients until Kellogg recoverd from the damage done by Bell, about 1909. The obvious Scandinavian bias of Stromberg's founders led them to license manufacture of L.M. Ericsson mechanical telephone switching technology known in the U.S. as the "Stromberg X-Y" switching machine. X-Y was enormously popular in the non-Bell telephone companies just after World War II. One more historic name one might run across is the Leich Electric Company at Genoa, Illinois [close to Chicago!], based upon buying the rights of North Electric's manual telephone equipment in one of North's low points while North was getting into automatic switches. Curiously, what made Leich famous was its devlopment of its own form of automatic switch, designed by a German who had worked at North Electric, went to Germany to fight for the Kaiser, and came back to the U.S. after the war. Leich's relay-switch most closely resembled a crossbar switch for some decades before the term was coined, and its unique style was quite suited to PBXs and very small telephone exchanges. Leich enjoyed considerable popularity in this arena, and supplied telephone sets that bore the Leich name. While there were a number of other long-dead suppliers. one more deserves mention, because it is credited as being the source of practical frequency-selective ringing that Bell nver really used. That firm is Dean Electric Company of Elyria, Ohio. W.W.Dean, its founder, had worked at Kellogg, where he learned that although Western Electric had tried frequency-selective ringing in the early 1900's, they had failed at developing a stable source of the several frequencies needed. Dean managed to make the system of multiple ringing frequencies practical, and the non-Bell companies adopted variants of Dean's development widely. Thus, we see one of the leading differentiators between Bell and non-Bell telephones. This may have been a long and (hopefully not too) labored response to a short question, but I hope it affords a rather full picture of the several names of antique apparatus would-be antique collectors might encounter. In writing it, I relied heavily upon a book I would recommend to anyone who really wants to understand the mindset of various factions in the United States telecom industry, for many of the attitudes of a century of history remain to this very day. In that book, one can see how those attitudes were generated and how they prevail ... as well as how much of today's operating methods really replicate inventions of generations ago. The book to read is: "The Spirit of Independent Telephony," by Charles A. Pleasance ISBN 0-9622205-0-7 Published by Independent Telephone Books P.O Box 321, Johnson City, TN 37601 Last priced at $29.50 plus $3.00 (domestic) or $6.00 (international) shipping. Visa or Mastercard orders accepted at (615) 926-0302 (And, once again, our Moderator can rightfully pride himself on his home town's intimate involvement with telecomm history.)
varney@ihlpf.att.com (Al L Varney) (03/25/91)
In article <telecom11.226.1@eecs.nwu.edu> 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) writes: > In article <Digest v11, iss211>, Jim E. Dunne <motcid!void! > dunne@uunet.uu.net> describes an old North Electric branded telephone.... > The book to read is: > "The Spirit of Independent Telephony," > by Charles A. Pleasance > ISBN 0-9622205-0-7 > Published by Independent Telephone Books > P.O Box 321, Johnson City, TN 37601 > Last priced at $29.50 plus $3.00 (domestic) > or $6.00 (international) shipping. > Visa or Mastercard orders accepted at (615) 926-0302 And the place to visit is: "Museum of Independent Telephony" Located in the back half of the Dickinson County Museum, Abilene, Kansas (just East of the Eisenhower Museum, also worth a visit). An interesting collection of old telephones, switchboards and other equipment that involve non-Bell companies. The curator/manager gives individual "tours" and will talk at length on about any "Independent" topic you want to name. She has the most complete collection of "Independent Telephony" books and magazines I've seen. Kansas was rife with Independents, and still has several. My home town was almost surrounded with very small ones. Some were just a switchboard, with maybe a 100 square mile territory. Short poles and 8 gauge(?) steel wire were common; my Dad purchased a mile segment of the wire when Southwestern Bell bought out one of them. (The wire was stiff and very rusty, but it made a good electric cattle fence.) One of the last Independents in the area was very modern, and had underground cable way before SW Bell put it in locally. Underground cable was very desirable, because ice storms took out wire/poles every year or so. We had 8-party Southwestern Bell service, went dial in about 1960. I still remember the "open house" of the little SXS CDO, about the size of a two-car garage. This had the battery plant, Dist. Frame, tone generator, etc. as well as those wonderful switches. (Little did I know that twenty years later I would be working at the Hawthorne Plant in Cicero, IL -- where the switches were still in production (or at least parts were). ANI was added around 1973, before that you dialed a toll call as 1+ ..., but the operator had to ask "Number, please?"; you KNEW she meant the number you were calling from! The little CDO is still in operation, but will be replaced soon by an Ericsson switch. That will signal the end of four-digit toll-free calling for the folks back home (and the number always starts with 3!). It took several visits to explain Divestiture to my grandmother (90+); how will I EVER explain why she has to dial 428- in front of her friends numbers ???? I did ask a former "farm boy next door" (1.5 mile walk) who now works for SW Bell why they couldn't make the whole town a Centrex group and retain the nine-digit numbers ... he didn't have an answer for me. { Hey, Steve, any chance I can get a old switch from the CDO? Please? } Al Varney, AT&T Network Systems, Lisle, IL
wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) (03/26/91)
Al L Varney discussed Kansas Independents. My friend the telephone collector told me about being in and around Lawrence, Kansas in the late 50's/early 60's. There was a full scale telephone war going on between the Independents and Ma; who was apparently trying to take over. There was full scale sabotage going on, eventually by both sides. Poles chopped down, trunks cut, etc. ISTM that part of that was that Ma claimed that Mom & Pop could not provide quality service, and low and behold, they couldn't!!! Before the shooting started, townfolk had one or the other LEC's, or maybe both. But you could not call from Ma to Mom & Pop or vice versa. One other piece of 'break your heart' trivia. Lee was driving by the old telco's office, and saw a large pile of magneto phones. They had been pulled from service to be replaced with new-fangled things with central battery and a DIAL! Lee was given all the old sets he could carry, cuz "no one would EVER want old junk like that" the man said. Well, Lee loaded up his car with as many as he could carry. Seeing how at that time he drove a 1956 Cadillac high-top rescue ambulance, that was quite a few. But Lee was not much smarter then the rest of us. He gave or traded them all away before they became desirable collector's items. He's still got the Caddy, however ;-}
kent@sunfs3.bos.camex.com (Kent Borg) (03/28/91)
In article <telecom11.235.8@eecs.nwu.edu> varney@ihlpf.att.com (Al L Varney) writes: > at least parts were). ANI was added around 1973, before that you > dialed a toll call as 1+ ..., but the operator had to ask "Number, > please?"; you KNEW she meant the number you were calling from! I never knew. I always had to ask what she meant. I had assumed that they knew where I was calling from (you mean I could have lied and gotten away with it? -- never occured to me), yet I had just dialed the number I wanted, so why would she ask that? Kent Borg internet: kent@camex.com AOL: kent borg H: (617) 776-6899 W: (617) 426-3577