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Northern California Wildfire Destroys American Telephony Museum
alphadogg writes: In this day of smartphones, cell towers and wearables, the American Museum of Telephony in the Mountain Ranch community of northern California preserved artifacts of a much different world of communications. But the museum, along with surrounding residences, burnt to the ground late last week during the raging Butte Fire and it's assumed that the collection is largely lost. The operator is vowing to rebuild.
"Your link could not be completed, please try again."
There are still plenty of museum pieces delivering "broadband internet" all over the USA.
If only the Phone Cops had been able to call in the Phone Firemen...
Do you know what burning copper smells like? DO YOU? Well, I do!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Seattle.
Dun dun DUN!
One would thing they would at least have had the common sense to evacuate the exhibits...
We are not going to be mature about this.
That read "raging butte fire" and lol'd so hard?
Meucci akhbar!
I had that once after some Mexican food.
Skylar and me, we prefer the warm, rich sound that you can only get from a pre-1930's phone. But I guess the rest of you are used to settling for your lame digital phones.
[takes hit off bong]
And did I mention that we were into that band before they went mainstream and poseurs like you jumped on the bandwagon?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
http://jklmuseum.com/
raging Butte Fire
Hahaha haha. Hahahaha. Hah!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
you said raging butte fire
I see what you did there.
Does anyone know if anything in their collection was irreplaceable, or extremely rare?
Do they have insurance?
Got that from a burrito once.
Clicking it gets you nowhere.
the operator is vowing to rebuild ... :sigh missed opportunity: ... )(*&)%&#()@)^(*@$^()_*&@)(^*^^NO CARRIER
the operator is vowing to redial
*laugh*
On the other hand, back when Bell owned literally the entire telephone network from the handset to the central office they designed their telephones to last for decades and to provide good call quality. Once the regulations changed and now anyone could manufacture/sell a telephone, the quality of non-Western-Electric phones dropped so far that there are many old landline phones that have terrible acoustic properties. I know because my parents were cheapskates and we had them.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Fortunately, the Telephone Museum, AKA The New England Museum of Telephony in Ellsworth, Maine hasn't burned down.
This museum has several *working* switches, including a #3 and a #5 crossbar switch, dozens of switchboards, and other cool stuff.
http://thetelephonemuseum.org/exhibits/
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Unlike modern phones, some of those probably will just need the ashes blown out and a new wood case and will probably be fully functional again.
When I was young, we had one of those bakelite rotary phones. That was a hell of a tough phone. I'm pretty sure the handset would be considered a deadly weapon by today's standards. My sister and I laughed like crazy when we saw someone in a spy movie kill someone with the same model phone we had.
The summary shows an underline, and my cursor changes to indicate that I can click on it. Yet, nothing happens when I click on it. Nice mangling of html there, slashdot. Is it supposed to be some sort of twisted play on the fact that the museum burned to the ground?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Having a priceless collection in a location prone to fires sounds like a recipe for a lost collection. It's easy to be wise now that it went wrong, but whatever happened to fireproof walls?
I went to a museum in Germany a few years ago. As an engineer, I found the building to be at least as interesting as the content (though the content was interesting). It was covered with metal plates, all connected by wires and it had several ground connectors. In other words the entire building was inside a faraday cage, making it more or less immune to lightning strikes. Also being metal, sparks would not start a fire, though a blaze in a nearby building could likely radiate enough heat through the wall to make the building self ignite. It's likely that wouldn't happen though as the fire station was within walking distance, which mean the fire brigade would likely be able to keep it cold enough not to ignite. With items dating back as far as the 16th century, I'm pretty sure they (owner/insurance) thought of all scenarios they could think of and found a way to counter as many as possible.
Looks like at least some people in the US could learn from German quality.
"Raging butte fire"
Didn't Pac Bell send its old ESS switches down to sunny Mexico?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, the origina dual plugger prototype is still on displace in the place of its creation in the former home of its designer Alberto Santos-Dumont in Petropolis, Brazil. Next to it is a framed letter from Thomas Edison praising him on his invention. While at the same time, a few thousand miles away in the US, Edison subsequently then plagiarized and took credit for it by filing the patent at the US patent office. As another aside, look up Santos-Dumont. He demonstrated powered flight several years before the Wright brother at an air show in Paris in plane called: 14 Bis. He is one of the many inventors in history that was brilliant when it came to science and an idiot that when it came to publicity and business. I'd wager that most of you have never even heard of him.
On the other hand, back when Bell owned literally the entire telephone network from the handset to the central office they designed their telephones to last for decades and to provide good call quality. Once the regulations changed and now anyone could manufacture/sell a telephone, the quality of non-Western-Electric phones dropped so far that there are many old landline phones that have terrible acoustic properties. [...]
Well, really early telephones have terrible acoustic properties, from the simple fact that the microphone and speaker elements were quite primitive -- carbon elements (IIRC) on paper cones with Alnico (not ceramic or rare earth) magnets.
I think it may of been the 1950s or 60s, perhaps earlier, but Bell standardized on filtering audio to pass voice frequencies in the 300 to 3400 Hertz range. I believe this (or a 300-3k Hz simplification) became an ITU standard.
I agree the build quality of Western Electric (and Nortel) telephones, particularly business phones were impressive in how ruggedly build "office equipment" was built.
Here's an interesting look at audio quality of modern (digital) mobile phones, from IEEE Spectrum (free access), Why Mobile Voice Quality Still Stinks—and How to Fix It
They'll use 3D printing to replicate all the artifacts. The public will never know . . .
According to all the references I can find, that flight happened in 1906, three years after Kitty Hawk. Many people who were unaware of the Wright Brothers (afraid of having their ideas stolen, the Wrights mostly avoided publicity) hailed him as the first man to fly, but the Wrights did manage it beforre him.
There's a very nice telephone museum (with lots of working switch gear) in Seattle. And another little one in the (very) rural town of Cle Elum, WA. And probably lots more scattered around the country. I suspect that these smalls town are where the old Strowgers, crossbars, and crank phones retire to. Then the townsfolk build museums around them when they finally die :-)
... "raging Butte Fire"... seriously? its called the raging butt fire? W T F
the quality of non-Western-Electric phones dropped so far that there are many old landline phones that have terrible acoustic properties
And the price dropped with them. As long as non-telephone companies have been making telephones, you could get well built ones though. You just had to pay a lot more, and sometimes have to look for ones targeting business or public use.
JKL MUSEUM OF TELEPHONY
Dedicated to preserving telephone history
oh. oops, ow. SNRK
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff