"Robert Swinney" wrote in message
...
Jim,
Likely what you saw up the canyon was what telephone guys call "parallel".
Parallel was just that; two conductors laying side by side, about 22 gauge
or so (I'm sure a Telco guy can correct us here). The conductors were
very
hard drawn copper, or an alloy, to give strength against wind and ice
loading. If one didn't know better, it looked like a single wire.

Single wire, ground for the other side, telephone circuits are not
possible
today because of all the AC currents they would share the ground with.
Maybe one would work only over a very short distance, say one span or
less.
Dunno. I talked on one of the "ancients" about 40 years ago, in rural
Kansas, and it was so noisy as to be almost unusable.

My dad set one of those up at Guadalcanal.

--
Ed Huntress