On 2016-11-01, Leon Fisk wrote:
On 1 Nov 2016 04:11:03 GMT
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

snip
The fun ones were more recent ones which had all the wires
embedded in clear silicone grease -- really messy to handle.

Icky-pick, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icky-pick

Intersting -- and appropriate. :-)

Apparently, not silicone, so I was wrong there.

I was a two-way radio tech. The phone techs I had to work with had
their own vocabulary or rather slang. Icky-pick was one of them. Along
with dry pair, short, boot, tip, ring... always a lot of fun trying to
communicate back in forth in our individual terms ;-)

Well ... tip and ring come from the old 3-conductor phone plugs.
They were (from end back) tip, ring, and sleeve. On a manual
switchboard, sleeve was used to flag a line as busy -- and the operator
would hear a loud click when the tip of the phone plug touched the
sleeve of the jack, signaling her to not complete the connection (unless
a conference call was being set up.)

The same thing was done with the step-by-step Strowger switch (or
Ma Bell called it 10x10) exchanges. There were three wires (within the
exchange) associated with each line. Tip and Ring came from the outside
on the customer's line, and went to a double-sided bank of contacts
swept by a wiper. In parallel with that was a second bank, only single
contacts used, swept by another wiper. You pick up your phone, it draws
current through a "line relay", closing contacts to call a line finder
to connect your phone to the first level of dialing, and it feeds a
signal back on the sleeve connection to a cutoff relay which disconnects
your line from calling for more equipment until the current call is
over. Each digit you dial moves you to another switch, except that the
last two digits are handled by a single switch. It feeds voltage to the
called party's cut-off relay, and a ring signal to the phone pair (tip
and ring). When the called party picks up, DC flows through the line
(the ring signal was AC -- most commonly 20 Hz, except for some party
lines) and connects the full conversation link until both parties hang
up. (Actually -- the calling party hanging up resets everything quickly,
the called party is not so quick on these step-by-step exchanges.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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