I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The
next column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity
ratings. I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of
my life, but I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly
associated with electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis

spaco wrote:
I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The
next column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity
ratings. I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of
my life, but I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly
associated with electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis


Interesting... wonder what the conductivity of the "leadless" solders and
"silver bearing solders" are.

A guy I know told me about how he thought his tooth enamel wasn't conductive
until he stripped the insulation on a plugged-in extension cord with his
teeth.

In article , spaco says...

Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Make a joint that is well-wrapped mechanically. Measure it's
resistance. Then solder it.

I bet you a case of cokes that it's lower resistance once
it's soldered.

Then make the joint, without wrapping it first, only soldering.
I bet another case of cokes the two soldered joints will have
the same resistance.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

spaco wrote:

I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The
next column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity
ratings. I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of
my life, but I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly
associated with electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis


I 'spect that the usually thin sections and its intimate contact with
materials having high thermal conductivity makes the poorer electrical
conductivity of lead/tin solders not such a beeg problem, 'eh?

P.S. I heard somewhere recently that someone calculated that there's
more copper existing in wiring and plumbing in the USA than remains in
the known national reserves. Can anyone confirm that?

Jeff (Who remembers visiting that big open pit copper mine in
Coppertown, Utah circa 1955.)

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."

Yipes! That certainly fits the subject.

Steve

Tom Gardner wrote:

A guy I know told me about how he thought his tooth enamel wasn't conductive
until he stripped the insulation on a plugged-in extension cord with his
teeth.

How Darwinian of him.

Bob Swinney
"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
m...
A guy I know told me about how he thought his tooth enamel wasn't
conductive until he stripped the insulation on a plugged-in extension cord
with his teeth.

Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.
--
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"spaco" wrote in message
.. .
I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The next
column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity ratings.
I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of my life, but
I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly associated with
electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis

Copper corrodes. It turns pretty green and blue. It eats up the wire.
If it is plated with something - it won't.

If you remember the old telephone lines - those with lots stretched across
crossbars....

Those are copper covered Steel. Thick - but it is known once the copper
is breached - as the steel changes the resistance. Methods were developed
to calculate the distance of the open, break or change in impedance.

We got some of this when the lines were falling down - abandoned lines.
They were on Air force property and old telegraph/telephone lines.

We used it in a massive grape arbor - strong steel copper clad wire.

Learned to coil wire with two hands that day.

Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Proctologically Violated©® wrote:
Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.
--
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"spaco" wrote in message
.. .

I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The next
column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity ratings.
I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of my life, but
I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly associated with
electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis




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Tom Gardner wrote:
A guy I know told me about how he thought his tooth enamel wasn't conductive
until he stripped the insulation on a plugged-in extension cord with his
teeth.


**HE** told you? I would have expected to hear about THIS
one from the CORONER! WOW! I got my tongue across a 9 V
battery once, when I was 99.9% sure it was dead. It may
have been weak, but definitely was not dead. I can't even
imagine what 120 V in the mouth would be like. Better not
talk about this too much or we'll hear about it being used
at Abu Ghraib in next week's papers!

Jon

Jeff Wisnia wrote:

P.S. I heard somewhere recently that someone calculated that there's
more copper existing in wiring and plumbing in the USA than remains in
the known national reserves. Can anyone confirm that?
There are totally MASSIVE amounts of copper in power company
transformers all over the place. I suspect that the total
copper in the little distribution transformers on everybody's
power poles are a bit more than the amount in the substation
transformers serving them, but it all adds up. The copper in
generating station alternators is also pretty huge.

Most power company transmission lines are aluminum with steel
strength cables in the center.

Jon

Proctologically Violated©® wrote:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
No way is it Silver! It is most likely tin or solder. Unless,
of course, it is aluminum wire. If it is aluminum, be VERY careful
to only use the proper aluminum-rated connections on everything -
breakers, switches, outlets, etc. And, torque all connections
every 10 years or so. Or, replace the damn fire hazard stuff with
copper at the earliest convenience.

If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
For anti-corrosion properties. Tin and solder don't corrode quickly.
Tin oxide is a pretty good conductor, too, as it is used to make the
see-through wiring on the glass plates of LCD displays. Silver
DOES corrode badly in the ever-present sulfur compounds in our
dirty air. It turns deeply black, which is why if the stuff on your
wires still looks "silver", it isn't Silver.

Wire wrap wire IS plated with pure Ag, and it definitely tarnishes
on the outside of wire-wrap joints over time. That doesn't seem to
keep them from still working, though.

Jon

Respectively beg to differ, Martin. The standard telephone wire was #9
copper. It was copper, not plated with anything. There is quite a lot of it
still around. Generally the telegraph lines were heavier and sometimes they
were made of iron. I'm not sure why - extra storm protection maybe.

The old wire chiefs had fault location down to a science. One of the first
jobs I had was working on the AT&T Long Lines test board. There were
several tests used. Wheatstone and Varley were a couple I recall. I had
the privilege of working under a retirement aged test boardman. He taught
me a lot. That was my first encounter with a Wheatstone bridge. The bridge
was part of the test board, where the test guys could patch into the various
circuits - and isolate them from traffic. Elaborate resistance records were
kept on each circuit (pair of #9 line wires). Those records were
continually updated. They made it possible for a wire chief on the test
board to locate the distance out to a line fault. This was all done away
with when the TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer) was perfected.

Crossbars, unless you are referring to the common crossbar switch in central
offices, were out on the poles and known as *cross arms*.

Little known trivia: Coast - to - coast telephone circuits existed before
electronic amplification. This were done using lumped inductance loaded,
heavy wire pairs, generally the lower capacitive, "pole pair". Expensive
enough it made most folks send telegrams.

Bob Swinney

"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote in message
...
Copper corrodes. It turns pretty green and blue. It eats up the wire.
If it is plated with something - it won't.

If you remember the old telephone lines - those with lots stretched across
crossbars....

Those are copper covered Steel. Thick - but it is known once the copper
is breached - as the steel changes the resistance. Methods were developed
to calculate the distance of the open, break or change in impedance.

We got some of this when the lines were falling down - abandoned lines.
They were on Air force property and old telegraph/telephone lines.

We used it in a massive grape arbor - strong steel copper clad wire.

Learned to coil wire with two hands that day.

Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Proctologically Violated©® wrote:
Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of
the current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.
--
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"spaco" wrote in message
.. .

I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The next
column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity ratings.
I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of my life,
but I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly associated
with electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis




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News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+
Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption
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"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message
...
snip-------

Jeff (Who remembers visiting that big open pit copper mine in
Coppertown, Utah circa 1955.)

Well, Jeff (Who remembers visiting that big open pit copper mine in
Coppertown, Utah circa 1955.), I've been gone from Utah for ten years now,
but if you were to return to the same mine, you wouldn't recognize it. For
one, do you recall driving through a long tunnel, from Bingham Canyon to
Copperfield, the town on the other side of the tunnel? That's where the
observation point was when you go back far enough in time, for which '55
should qualify.

Not only is the tunnel no longer there, neither is the mountain. It has
all been mined and is now a much larger hole in the ground. It was that
way when I left Utah. I can't imagine what it must look like now.

Bingham Canyon was one of the places that was a complete throwback in time.
Not much changed there, it just slowly died off and was destroyed by the
mine. Narrow street, just barely wide enough for one car to pass another,
I have fond memories of the place.

The town you mentioned, Copperton (not Coppertown), is actually a couple
miles outside of the mining district, and was, for the most part, the
company town. It still exists as far as I know. Everything else is long
gone.

Harold

"Robert Swinney" wrote in message
. ..
Respectively beg to differ, Martin. The standard telephone wire was #9
copper. It was copper, not plated with anything. There is quite a lot of
it
still around. Generally the telegraph lines were heavier and sometimes
they
were made of iron. I'm not sure why - extra storm protection maybe.

Toll lines, yes. The long distance lines were copper.

The drops used for houses were, indeed, copper covered steel wire. Black
rubber-like insulation with a pair of wires within-----sort of an overgrown
version of 300 ohm TV cable----that had no value when taken to the salvage
yard. Any of us old scroungers know that.

Harold

allow me to point out to you that the surface effect is negligible at
power line frequencies - at RF frequencies it becomes significant. the
coating is for corosion resistance. To study further, look up surface
effect - you can derive it yourself if you care to solve maxwell's
equations as a function of freq.

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 20:40:09 -0500, "Proctologically Violated©®"
wrote:

Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.
Bill

www.wbnoble.com

to contact me, do not reply to this message,
instead correct this address and use it

will iam_ b_ No ble at msn daught com

Seems to me simple coulombic forces (very large, btw) would drive the
electrons radially outwards.
Assuming the wire were actually momentarily charged, like a capacitor....
Which, then, mebbe it's not, so then my argument fails.... much too
confusing....

I think I'll solve Maxwell's Equations tonite, during CSI or sumpn.....
--
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"William B Noble (don't reply to this address)" wrote
in message ...
allow me to point out to you that the surface effect is negligible at
power line frequencies - at RF frequencies it becomes significant. the
coating is for corosion resistance. To study further, look up surface
effect - you can derive it yourself if you care to solve maxwell's
equations as a function of freq.

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 20:40:09 -0500, "Proctologically Violated©®"
wrote:

Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of
the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.
Bill

www.wbnoble.com

to contact me, do not reply to this message,
instead correct this address and use it

will iam_ b_ No ble at msn daught com

Yup. It was "P" wire. I still have some "P clamps around here someplace.

Pete Stanaitis
-----------------

Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:
"Robert Swinney" wrote in message
. ..

Respectively beg to differ, Martin. The standard telephone wire was #9
copper. It was copper, not plated with anything. There is quite a lot of

it

still around. Generally the telegraph lines were heavier and sometimes

they

were made of iron. I'm not sure why - extra storm protection maybe.


Toll lines, yes. The long distance lines were copper.

The drops used for houses were, indeed, copper covered steel wire. Black
rubber-like insulation with a pair of wires within-----sort of an overgrown
version of 300 ohm TV cable----that had no value when taken to the salvage
yard. Any of us old scroungers know that.

Harold

Robert Swinney wrote:

Respectively beg to differ, Martin. The standard telephone wire was #9
copper. It was copper, not plated with anything. There is quite a lot of it
still around. Generally the telegraph lines were heavier and sometimes they
were made of iron. I'm not sure why - extra storm protection maybe.


Robert. You must have been working with the original transcontinental
telephone lines. They were
indeed 9 or 10 gage solid copper wire. However many later Open Wire
lines were smaller gage and
copper steel.

Many farmer lines used Iron as I think it was cheaper

Bill K7NOM

The old wire chiefs had fault location down to a science. One of the first
jobs I had was working on the AT&T Long Lines test board. There were
several tests used. Wheatstone and Varley were a couple I recall. I had
the privilege of working under a retirement aged test boardman. He taught
me a lot. That was my first encounter with a Wheatstone bridge. The bridge
was part of the test board, where the test guys could patch into the various
circuits - and isolate them from traffic. Elaborate resistance records were
kept on each circuit (pair of #9 line wires). Those records were
continually updated. They made it possible for a wire chief on the test
board to locate the distance out to a line fault. This was all done away
with when the TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer) was perfected.

Crossbars, unless you are referring to the common crossbar switch in central
offices, were out on the poles and known as *cross arms*.

Little known trivia: Coast - to - coast telephone circuits existed before
electronic amplification. This were done using lumped inductance loaded,
heavy wire pairs, generally the lower capacitive, "pole pair". Expensive
enough it made most folks send telegrams.

Bob Swinney

"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote in message
...


Copper corrodes. It turns pretty green and blue. It eats up the wire.
If it is plated with something - it won't.

If you remember the old telephone lines - those with lots stretched across
crossbars....

Those are copper covered Steel. Thick - but it is known once the copper
is breached - as the steel changes the resistance. Methods were developed
to calculate the distance of the open, break or change in impedance.

We got some of this when the lines were falling down - abandoned lines.
They were on Air force property and old telegraph/telephone lines.

We used it in a massive grape arbor - strong steel copper clad wire.

Learned to coil wire with two hands that day.

Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Proctologically Violated©® wrote:


Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of
the current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.
--
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"spaco" wrote in message
t...



I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The next
column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity ratings.
I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of my life,
but I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly associated
with electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis





----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet
News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+
Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption
=----

Jon Elson wrote:
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
For anti-corrosion properties. Tin and solder don't corrode quickly.
Tin oxide is a pretty good conductor, too, as it is used to make the
see-through wiring on the glass plates of LCD displays. Silver
DOES corrode badly in the ever-present sulfur compounds in our
dirty air. It turns deeply black, which is why if the stuff on your
wires still looks "silver", it isn't Silver.
..

Jon

Or, perhaps, to make it easier to solder. Nothing easier to solder -
and with a greater chance of getting perfect wetting - than pieces
already tinned.

John Martin

Proctologically Violated©® wrote:
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Skin effect (current flowing on the surface of a conductor) only
begins to become measurable at Megahertz frequencies. At 60 hz
it would be essentially ZERO.
...lew...

Robert Swinney wrote:

Respectively beg to differ, Martin. The standard telephone wire was #9
copper. It was copper, not plated with anything. There is quite a lot of it
still around. Generally the telegraph lines were heavier and sometimes they
were made of iron. I'm not sure why - extra storm protection maybe.


Robert, One thing I'm absolutely certain of is when they finally ran the
phone line up the two mile road to the little comunity of Marrysville in
PA, where we lived at the time, in the 1940s (late, after the war) they
used steel wire plated with copper. I collected some of the scraps
hoping to use it. :-(
...lew...

Jon Elson wrote:

Wire wrap wire IS plated with pure Ag, and it definitely tarnishes
on the outside of wire-wrap joints over time. That doesn't seem to
keep them from still working, though.

Jon

That is because the actual joint is "gas tight" and hence wont
corrode.
...lew... (who has made a lot of wirewrap connections)

Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:
"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message
...
snip-------

Jeff (Who remembers visiting that big open pit copper mine in
Coppertown, Utah circa 1955.)


Well, Jeff (Who remembers visiting that big open pit copper mine in

Coppertown, Utah circa 1955.), I've been gone from Utah for ten years now,

but if you were to return to the same mine, you wouldn't recognize it. For
one, do you recall driving through a long tunnel, from Bingham Canyon to
Copperfield, the town on the other side of the tunnel? That's where the
observation point was when you go back far enough in time, for which '55
should qualify.

I do remember that tunnel, and also a "town", if you could call it that,
stretched out along a mile or more of road which had houses and shops on
both sides of it.

But, what I can't forget was stopping along that road to grab a Coke
with whatever college buddy I was driving across the country with, and
being immediately surrounded by very young native american kids begging
for handouts.

Being about 19 at the time, and I suppose having led what you'd consider
a sheltered existance around the cities of San Francisco and Boston, I'd
never experienced child beggars before or after that, here in the USA,
though I've sure seen plenty of them elsewhere in the world since then.
I'm always saddened by it, wherever it happens, though I understand that
it's just local industry in some places.

Not only is the tunnel no longer there, neither is the mountain. It has
all been mined and is now a much larger hole in the ground. It was that
way when I left Utah. I can't imagine what it must look like now.

Yes, that mountain reminded me of a volcano, with a spiral road with RR
tracks running around the inside. From the observation point we could
see the dust puffs from blasting going on here and there on the inside
walls, I remember it seemed like there was one of those explosions every
few minutes.


Bingham Canyon was one of the places that was a complete throwback in time.
Not much changed there, it just slowly died off and was destroyed by the
mine. Narrow street, just barely wide enough for one car to pass another,
I have fond memories of the place.

The town you mentioned, Copperton (not Coppertown), is actually a couple
miles outside of the mining district, and was, for the most part, the
company town. It still exists as far as I know. Everything else is long
gone.

But not forgotten by me...

During that same trip through Utah a large wooden water pipeline ran
alongside a road we were on, and I couldn't resist having my traveling
companion take this silly photo of me at a spot where some AH must have
taken a potshot at the pipe.

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/leaker.html

Thanks for the mammaries...

Jeff
--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."

spaco wrote:
I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The
next column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity
ratings. I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of
my life, but I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly
associated with electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis

It's all relative, though, Pete. Iron (or steel) at room temperature
is about 12. Yet you don't think of that as being a poor conductor.
Or the mercury used in a mercury switch, which is under 2. They are
actually pretty decent conductors, with silver being an incredible one.
Unless you compare it, of course, to a superconductor down around
absolute zero....

John Martin

Lew sez:

Robert, One thing I'm absolutely certain of is when they finally ran the
phone line up the two mile road to the little comunity of Marrysville in
PA, where we lived at the time, in the 1940s (late, after the war) they
used steel wire plated with copper. I collected some of the scraps
hoping to use it.

True. But I was describing long haul transmission lines on cross arms of
wood poles. The only ones I was familiar with from AT&T and RR experience
were #9 hard drawn copper. I think that was used most all over the U.S. for
open wire.

I think you are referring to what was generally called "parallel". Parallel
consisted of 2 copper plated steel conductors of 17 - 18 AWG, laying
side-by-side (not twisted) thus the name parallel; covered with a heavy
rubber insulation. Parallel was flat and typically held in reuseable "P"
clamps, although it could be "served up", or wrapped with soft copper to
form a hook for hanging as well. P clamps were easy and fast to hang on
poles in "J" hooks as I remember. Parallel was typically used only for
short haul stuff such as house drops. Being flat, it lacked the cross-talk
rejection characteristics of transposed open wire, or twisted pair.

Bob Swinney

"Lew Hartswick" wrote in message
k.net...
Robert Swinney wrote:

Respectively beg to differ, Martin. The standard telephone wire was #9
copper. It was copper, not plated with anything. There is quite a lot of
it still around. Generally the telegraph lines were heavier and
sometimes they were made of iron. I'm not sure why - extra storm
protection maybe.


...lew...

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 22:32:28 -0800, "Harold and Susan Vordos"
wrote:


"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message
...
snip-------

Jeff (Who remembers visiting that big open pit copper mine in
Coppertown, Utah circa 1955.)

Well, Jeff (Who remembers visiting that big open pit copper mine in
Coppertown, Utah circa 1955.), I've been gone from Utah for ten years now,
but if you were to return to the same mine, you wouldn't recognize it. For
one, do you recall driving through a long tunnel, from Bingham Canyon to
Copperfield, the town on the other side of the tunnel? That's where the
observation point was when you go back far enough in time, for which '55
should qualify.

Not only is the tunnel no longer there, neither is the mountain. It has
all been mined and is now a much larger hole in the ground. It was that
way when I left Utah. I can't imagine what it must look like now.

Bingham Canyon was one of the places that was a complete throwback in time.
Not much changed there, it just slowly died off and was destroyed by the
mine. Narrow street, just barely wide enough for one car to pass another,
I have fond memories of the place.

The town you mentioned, Copperton (not Coppertown), is actually a couple
miles outside of the mining district, and was, for the most part, the
company town. It still exists as far as I know. Everything else is long
gone.

Harold

Mufilira, Luansha, Kitwe, Ndola and the surrounding areas of the
CXopperbelt in Zambia had/have many large open pit copper mines as
well. Spent a few years over there in the seventies.

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 20:40:09 -0500, "Proctologically Violated©®"
wrote:

Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of the
current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.


Skin effect is almost totally irrelevent at 60 htz, and most of that
old knob and tube wiring was bright tin plated. Copper plated aluminum
would be a corrosion nightmare.

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 12:11:03 -0600, "Robert Swinney"
wrote:

I think you are referring to what was generally called "parallel". Parallel
consisted of 2 copper plated steel conductors of 17 - 18 AWG, laying
side-by-side (not twisted) thus the name parallel; covered with a heavy
rubber insulation. Parallel was flat and typically held in reuseable "P"
clamps, although it could be "served up", or wrapped with soft copper to
form a hook for hanging as well. P clamps were easy and fast to hang on
poles in "J" hooks as I remember. Parallel was typically used only for
short haul stuff such as house drops. Being flat, it lacked the cross-talk
rejection characteristics of transposed open wire, or twisted pair.

You just described "C Rural" wire - they still make and use it today
for long runs of one phone line. The big advantage being it will go
300 to 600 foot spans between poles depending on the ice and wind
loading factors, just like the power line on the top of the pole.

http://www.superioressex.com/product...rural-wire.pdf

If they try using regular residential drop wire (1 or 2 pair) it
can't handle that long of a span without inter-setting additional
poles, and for one house it doesn't pay to hang a steel strand and
lash a normal 25-pair Alpeth cable to it.
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
Spamtrapped address: Remove the python and the invalid, and use a net.

In article , Harold and Susan Vordos says...

The drops used for houses were, indeed, copper covered steel wire. Black
rubber-like insulation with a pair of wires within-----sort of an overgrown
version of 300 ohm TV cable----that had no value when taken to the salvage
yard. Any of us old scroungers know that.

This is called "CopperWeld" wire. Basically drawn by inserting
a billet of steel inside a billet of copper. Then the billet is
drawn down into wire. At the end the copper is still on the
outside, and the steel is still on the inside!

Very strong stuff, which is why it's used (self supporting) for
subscriber's drops.

The same kind of cored wire is made using copper on the outside, and
niobium on the inside, for superconducting magnets. In this case
though they put ten or fifteen niobium slugs inside the copper
billet before drawing it down. When one is done there's a three
mill diameter copper wire, with a dozen or so niobium fillaments
visible in the cross section. Etch away the copper with nitric
acid, and you get a microscopic niobium brush!

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

In article , Robert Swinney
says...

True. But I was describing long haul transmission lines on cross arms of
wood poles. The only ones I was familiar with from AT&T and RR experience
were #9 hard drawn copper. I think that was used most all over the U.S. for
open wire.

That stuff makes great ham radio antennas. Err, so I've *heard*.

I think you are referring to what was generally called "parallel".

That's copperweld wire, not plated. It's drawn down from billet
with the same steel/copper cross section to start.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

Robert Swinney wrote:

Lew sez:


Robert, One thing I'm absolutely certain of is when they finally ran the
phone line up the two mile road to the little comunity of Marrysville in
PA, where we lived at the time, in the 1940s (late, after the war) they
used steel wire plated with copper. I collected some of the scraps
hoping to use it.


True. But I was describing long haul transmission lines on cross arms of
wood poles. The only ones I was familiar with from AT&T and RR experience
were #9 hard drawn copper. I think that was used most all over the U.S. for
open wire.

I think you are referring to what was generally called "parallel". Parallel
consisted of 2 copper plated steel conductors of 17 - 18 AWG, laying
side-by-side (not twisted) thus the name parallel; covered with a heavy
rubber insulation. Parallel was flat and typically held in reuseable "P"
clamps, although it could be "served up", or wrapped with soft copper to
form a hook for hanging as well. P clamps were easy and fast to hang on
poles in "J" hooks as I remember. Parallel was typically used only for
short haul stuff such as house drops. Being flat, it lacked the cross-talk
rejection characteristics of transposed open wire, or twisted pair.

Bob Swinney

No this was a two mile run of open wire with one on each side of the
pole. To about 4 or 5 people party line. Some other rememberances:
A budy and I had a short pair of climbers (only up to the ankles OUCH)
and a pair of earphones which we taped into the line ocaisonally. :-)
...lew...

Bob - read my note- I said old failing abandoned - telegraph/telephone.
This was in the High desert and mountains north.

I well know the TDR and Smith stuff - Long Lines used to send me stuff when
I was a kid. I was in El Paso and my dad was ATT/WESTERN - Long Lines adopted
my class and myself on the side I guess.

The lines ran from El Paso to New Mexico. High winds required concrete weights
to hand on the wires to keep them from sailing in the wind - pulling out the poles.
Some lines had 2 large fruit can size weights. So strength was needed.
It was cut by scoring and snapping. The wire required about a 3' minimum diameter.
I suspect they were 100 years old at the time - maybe 75. Likely used between
forts and during the war. The one with Black Jack in charge vs. Mexico bandits.....

Martin
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Robert Swinney wrote:
Respectively beg to differ, Martin. The standard telephone wire was #9
copper. It was copper, not plated with anything. There is quite a lot of it
still around. Generally the telegraph lines were heavier and sometimes they
were made of iron. I'm not sure why - extra storm protection maybe.

The old wire chiefs had fault location down to a science. One of the first
jobs I had was working on the AT&T Long Lines test board. There were
several tests used. Wheatstone and Varley were a couple I recall. I had
the privilege of working under a retirement aged test boardman. He taught
me a lot. That was my first encounter with a Wheatstone bridge. The bridge
was part of the test board, where the test guys could patch into the various
circuits - and isolate them from traffic. Elaborate resistance records were
kept on each circuit (pair of #9 line wires). Those records were
continually updated. They made it possible for a wire chief on the test
board to locate the distance out to a line fault. This was all done away
with when the TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer) was perfected.

Crossbars, unless you are referring to the common crossbar switch in central
offices, were out on the poles and known as *cross arms*.

Little known trivia: Coast - to - coast telephone circuits existed before
electronic amplification. This were done using lumped inductance loaded,
heavy wire pairs, generally the lower capacitive, "pole pair". Expensive
enough it made most folks send telegrams.

Bob Swinney

"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote in message
...

Copper corrodes. It turns pretty green and blue. It eats up the wire.
If it is plated with something - it won't.

If you remember the old telephone lines - those with lots stretched across
crossbars....

Those are copper covered Steel. Thick - but it is known once the copper
is breached - as the steel changes the resistance. Methods were developed
to calculate the distance of the open, break or change in impedance.

We got some of this when the lines were falling down - abandoned lines.
They were on Air force property and old telegraph/telephone lines.

We used it in a massive grape arbor - strong steel copper clad wire.

Learned to coil wire with two hands that day.

Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Proctologically Violated©® wrote:

Very interesting!

Which then suggests brazing electrical connections?

You omitted alum, nickel, gold.

Old wiring, at least in parts of NY, were soldered AND wire nutted!!
I think soldering of splices in house wiring is a very good, safe idea.
Just not all that convenient.

Now here's sumpn fer you electricians:

I have old cloth-covered #9-10 solid wire in my old cloth-covered house,
and sed wire is, I believe, *silver plated*!!!! Well, plated w/ sumpn,
brite and shiny.
If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk of
the current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??

Might make sense then, to silver, or even copper plate aluminum wire.
Like our pennies.
--
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"spaco" wrote in message
t...


I was just looking up expansion rates of metal for another post. The next
column in the Machinery's Handbook lists electrical conductivity ratings.
I have worked with electricity in one way or another, most of my life,
but I never realized how poorly some metals that are commonly associated
with electrical connections are!

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders. If you ever needed a case for making a good mechanical joint
before soldering, there it is!

Oh-- page 2193 of the 19th edition.

Pete Stanaitis



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Blame it on Edison. I bet it was for DC.

Martin
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



Lew Hartswick wrote:
Proctologically Violated©® wrote:

If it *is* silver, it is a marvelous idea, because sposedly the bulk
of the current density in a conducting wire lies on the surface of the
wire.
If it's tin plated, the question is then *why*!
Nickel??


Skin effect (current flowing on the surface of a conductor) only
begins to become measurable at Megahertz frequencies. At 60 hz
it would be essentially ZERO.
...lew...

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"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , Harold and Susan Vordos
says...

The drops used for houses were, indeed, copper covered steel wire.
Black
rubber-like insulation with a pair of wires within-----sort of an
overgrown
version of 300 ohm TV cable----that had no value when taken to the
salvage
yard. Any of us old scroungers know that.

This is called "CopperWeld" wire. Basically drawn by inserting
a billet of steel inside a billet of copper. Then the billet is
drawn down into wire. At the end the copper is still on the
outside, and the steel is still on the inside!

Very strong stuff, which is why it's used (self supporting) for
subscriber's drops.

The same kind of cored wire is made using copper on the outside, and
niobium on the inside, for superconducting magnets. In this case
though they put ten or fifteen niobium slugs inside the copper
billet before drawing it down. When one is done there's a three
mill diameter copper wire, with a dozen or so niobium fillaments
visible in the cross section. Etch away the copper with nitric
acid, and you get a microscopic niobium brush!

Jim

Cool! I always wondered how they made that damned telephone wire. New
why---it was obvious---for strength.

Harold

During that same trip through Utah a large wooden water pipeline ran
alongside a road we were on, and I couldn't resist having my traveling
companion take this silly photo of me at a spot where some AH must have
taken a potshot at the pipe.

What a handsome guy! I bet you drove the chicks crazy!

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 22:32:28 -0800, "Harold and Susan Vordos"
wrote:

Not only is the tunnel no longer there, neither is the mountain. It has
all been mined and is now a much larger hole in the ground. It was that
way when I left Utah. I can't imagine what it must look like now.


it's an interesting view in google earth.

With Silver as Conductivity = 100,
Copper = 97.61 Yup.
Lead = 8.42 !!! No wonder car batteries get hot!!!
Tin =14.39 !!! Lead and tin are the main constituents of most soft
solders.

Ah, but the resistance across anything is:

length/(area*conductivity)

The cross sectional area of a solder joint between two copper wires
laid side by side is huge compared to the cross section of any given
point in the wire and the length is very short. Even with lead, the
joint would conduct better than the rest of the wire...

That's also why the lead car battery terminals someone else mentioned
are not a problem (large cross-section). If your battery terminals are
getting hot, it's because the contact surface between the post and the
terminal is corroded or loose.

"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message
...
Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:
"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message
...

snip--
but if you were to return to the same mine, you wouldn't recognize it.
For
one, do you recall driving through a long tunnel, from Bingham Canyon to
Copperfield, the town on the other side of the tunnel? That's where
the
observation point was when you go back far enough in time, for which '55
should qualify.

I do remember that tunnel, and also a "town", if you could call it that,
stretched out along a mile or more of road which had houses and shops on
both sides of it.

The town in question was Bingham.

But, what I can't forget was stopping along that road to grab a Coke
with whatever college buddy I was driving across the country with, and
being immediately surrounded by very young native american kids begging
for handouts.

Being about 19 at the time, and I suppose having led what you'd consider
a sheltered existance around the cities of San Francisco and Boston, I'd
never experienced child beggars before or after that, here in the USA,
though I've sure seen plenty of them elsewhere in the world since then.
I'm always saddened by it, wherever it happens, though I understand that
it's just local industry in some places.

That surprises me. I don't recall any large number of them in Bingham, and
I spent considerable time there until the vast majority of the people moved
out, many to West Jordan and Midvale, where I was born and raised.

What you described could have easily been in another place----did you drive
through any of the Indian reservations in Southern Utah?

Bingham was a real melting pot------very unlike much of Utah. Because of
the mine, where men could find work easily, ethnics could live and work
without having a knowledge of English, so many of the people were
foreigners. My grandparents and my father lived in Bingham early on, having
immigrated from Greece. People, for the most part, got along beautifully,
and were not much influenced by the Mormon Church, very unlike the majority
of Utah. Only in one other city or town was it like that, and that was
in Carbon County, Price, specifically. Another mining town, but this one
coal mining.

There were two drugstores in Bingham, owned by two brothers named Evans, as
I recall. A very close family friend, who used to live in Bingham, worked
for them. The one store was under the apartment complex owned by the family
friend's father. The Royal Apartments, a 5 story building. There was almost
no room in the narrow canyon, so everything was built up, thus the very
narrow road.


Not only is the tunnel no longer there, neither is the mountain. It
has
all been mined and is now a much larger hole in the ground. It was
that
way when I left Utah. I can't imagine what it must look like now.

Yes, that mountain reminded me of a volcano, with a spiral road with RR
tracks running around the inside. From the observation point we could
see the dust puffs from blasting going on here and there on the inside
walls, I remember it seemed like there was one of those explosions every
few minutes.

That, too, is totally different now. There are no trains, not even to
deliver the ore to the smelter, which is several miles away, on the southern
tip of the Great Salt Lake. Huge trucks now haul the overburden and ore,
which is crushed and placed on a huge conveyer, transporting it around the
mountain to the smelter. Hope I have it right. My memory is growing dim.

The operation was (is?) known as Kennecott Copper. In recent years, it
was sold on more than one occasion. While we were still living in Utah, the
entire operation was shut down for what they called modernization. True
enough, they did modernize, but their objective was to bust the union, which
was way too powerful. People I knew held a job there, and held full time
employment elsewhere as well. It was an often heard line that they'd go to
work at Kennecott to get their night's sleep. Needless to say, the mine ran
7/24/365. When the mine closed down, they had a work force of something
over 8,000 employees. When it was restarted, about 2,500 were called back,
with a greater output than before. Not only was it more efficient, those
that were called back were actually expected to work.

During that same trip through Utah a large wooden water pipeline ran
alongside a road we were on, and I couldn't resist having my traveling
companion take this silly photo of me at a spot where some AH must have
taken a potshot at the pipe.

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/leaker.html

Thanks for the mammaries...

Jeff

That must have been along US 40, which was the main route east/west through
northern Utah. You'll notice there are no mountains in the picture, and
the Great Salt Lake appears to be in the background, so it must be the
pipeline that carried water to the smelter in question. Do you recall
seeing a huge (black) slag pile on the south side of the road?

Harold

Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:
"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message


But, what I can't forget was stopping along that road to grab a Coke
with whatever college buddy I was driving across the country with, and
being immediately surrounded by very young native american kids begging
for handouts.


snipped



That surprises me. I don't recall any large number of them in Bingham, and
I spent considerable time there until the vast majority of the people moved
out, many to West Jordan and Midvale, where I was born and raised.

What you described could have easily been in another place----did you drive
through any of the Indian reservations in Southern Utah?



That ould well have been, Harold. 50 or so years is stretching my memory
a bit and I must have made about 8 of those Boston to San Francisco and
back automobile commutes during my college years. The image of the kids
begging is solid, but the location could have been off.

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."