Robert Kaplan <kaplanr@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> (02/12/90)
I was reading the archives file of volume 9 a few minutes ago, when I came across a posting from "Bruce Hamilton," describing the difficulties he had been having in reaching "Deep Springs Toll Station #2" near Bishop, Cal. I lived at Deep Springs for a year, and much has changed. In 1987, the old toll-station wire line, which ran over the White Mountains for some 50 miles from Bishop, was replaced at our end by a UHF radio link, which used 462 and 467-MHz to send the audio to a repeater in the Whites and then back down to Bishop. When that was installed (by Deep Springs College, *NOT* by Contel), the college finally had a phone number: (714)--later (619) 872-2000. The audio was about as bad as it gets, and I imagine data would have been impossible (although I am told someone once sent 300 baud over it). Those who were there before the cutover told me that for a year or two, Contel allowed local dialing from Deep Springs to Bishop and Big Pine, but LD still had to go through an operator. The wire line stands to this day, as there are two people who live on another ranch in the valley and still get phone service from Contel as "Deep Springs #1." The poles have been taken down for the mile or so from their ranch to the college, though. When 872-2000 was connected, the college shelled out for a Panasonic 616. Before that, the intercom among the various ranch buildings was a system that dated from the school's founding in 1917: big wooden boxes on the walls with *cranks* and a mouthpiece on the box. To call someone else, you would crank the appropriate series of dots and dashes! :-) [The irony is, it was probably more reliable than the '616, which would crash whenever there was a storm nearby.] Anyway, I thought I'd share some details of a truly out-of-the-way phone system. Scott Fybush Disclaimer: This may not even be my own opinion.