john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (04/06/90)
Mike Olson <mao@postgres.berkeley.edu> writes: > I never saw this contraption myself, but I heard about it from > engineers who made the trip over there from our company. Can anyone > confirm or deny this? I don't know about Great Britain, but such a contraption existed right here in the US. Back when I used to be a CO groupie and had a friend who was night supervisor at AXminster (Santa Clara), there was a windowless room that had an entire wall of mechanical digital counters. I was told that these were for traffic analysis, not for billing. Anyway, every few minutes the lights in the room would go off, there would be a big flash, and the lights would come back on again. Cameras were actually photographically recording the numbers on the dial. It can only be assumed that the film was ultimately developed and scrutinized by some bean-counter types. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
Ge' Weijers <ge@sci.kun.nl> (04/09/90)
mao@postgres.berkeley.edu (Mike Olson) writes: >When I was in Holland, my phone had a counter on >the wall, although such a counter isn't required to get a phone >installed; the PTT will keep track of message units whether you have >one or not. In either case, I suspect that they used the same >technology at the billing office. You can hear pulses on the >telephone line whenever the counter increments; you can hear these >pulses at the same rate whether you have a counter or not. This gets >pretty grim on a trans-oceanic call; the pulses come along at better >than one every ten seconds, and make it hard to hear what the person >on the other end of the line is saying. Something is not quite right on the phone line in question. The counter impulse is given on both lines, and the counter is connected between the two signal lines and the ground line. The line transformer (or it's IC replacement) is connected to the two signal lines only. I've used a lot of phones, and usually you don't hear a thing. A complaint would have been in order. Bad isolation might be the cause. As an aside: the counter impulse is not available generally. You might have to pay for it, depending on the age of the exchange and the management of the district. Ge' Weijers Internet/UUCP: ge@cs.kun.nl Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, (uunet.uu.net!cs.kun.nl!ge) University of Nijmegen, Toernooiveld 1 6525 ED Nijmegen, the Netherlands tel. +3180612483 (UTC-2)
hrs1@cbnewsi.ATT.COM (herman.r.silbiger) (04/13/90)
In article <6125@accuvax.nwu.edu>, john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > windowless room that had an entire wall of mechanical digital > counters. I was told that these were for traffic analysis, not for > billing. You are right, that's what they were used for. Interestingly enough, these counters were made in Geneva, Switzerland by SODECO. They were probably the same counters used by the PTTs for billing. I still have a few in a cigar box in my workshop. Herman Silbiger