Jon Elson wrote:

Jim Stewart wrote:

When I was a kid, the telephone company installed
a new dial switching center and junked the manual
system. Every relay, tube, patch panel and power
supply was smashed before it was auctioned off to
the scrapmonger.

Now, my guess is this was before the breakup of Ma Bell, when one
company was both the equipment manufacturer (Western Electric) and the
largest user (AT&T and the many regional operating companies). It
made sense to break up any obsolete gear as it could easily end up on
the industrial surplus market either in the US or overseas, and
cutting into their sales of spare parts or maybe even whole exchanges.

I have no doubt that is AT&T deinstalled a switching center, it might
be installed a few months later in India, Latin America or someplace
like that.

My guess is that these companies are much less concerned about this
nowadays as the gear becomes obsolete much faster.


In the '60s and '70s some gear was crated up and shipped to other CO
locations to use as spare parts, since no new parts were availible. The
Ohio Bell office in Middletown, Ohio reiceved truckloads of this old
crap to keep their first generation Stowager CO running, until Armco
Steel threatened to take their 10,000 lines private. That got
Middletown a 'two' digit serial numbered ESS to replace the 425
exchange. They brought in a 10,000 line mobile ESS that was built in a
couple semi trailers to start the conversion. Then they replaced the
other 50,000 line exchange 10,000 lines at a time. The old CO building
was almost empty by the time the conversion was complete.

--
For the last time: I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!