Cable Equipment History Museum

www.theoldcatvequipmentmuseum.org

Brings back memories!!

I loved the earlier equiptment,much easier to use,produced a better picture (Being analogue and all)

 

The cinema in my younger days.



And today.

 

the top photo...is that one of those projectors that use a arc , like two welding rods ?

 

I love this thread.

 

Did it tho? I mean, did it? VHS is analog, pretty sure 4K UHD produces a better picture. Wouldn't you agree?

 

Dude111 would never agree with that...

 

Telegraph Museum Porthcurno, Museums in Cornwall

Cable Samples


The museum holds a large collection of cable samples dating from the beginning of undersea telegraphy to modern day fibre optics. One of the earliest is a section of the first cable laid between England and France in 1850. The collection also contains samples of early telephone cables including the first Transatlantic telephone cable (TAT-1) which became operational in 1956 and carried 36 telephone channels. Fibre optic communications was first developed in the 1970s using pulses of light to send messages around the world. The collection includes samples of early fibre optic cables up to the present day.

 

way worse picture obviously. in some cases you can make your pro-analog arguments, but the current video pictures are objectively better.

easier to use? that's arguable too. maybe so, just because there were way fewer features. but to watch tv on a current cable box you really just have to plug your hdmi cord into the tv. none of that shit like in the old days where you had to run it through your vcr, then your stereo, then your mother-in-law, etc.

 

Well I guess I meant a more NATURAL PICTURE .. A much nicer experience.......

 

At one time I was a senior tech for VM, I used to do a lot of work on their phone network, or Telco, as it's known in the trade. I did a spell with BT too on the overheads, that was fun. I have a set of books from the 1940's on electrical installation, there's some great pictures of old cables and the like, I also have a collection of old test meters dating back many years, it's quite interesting how they've changed over the years.

 

In America a man was digging a hole, 6 feet down he found some old thin cables, from this he concluded they had a telephone network around 60 years ago, meanwhile a Canadian dug down 10 feet and found some thin cables, he therefore concluded they had a phone network around a hundred years ago, While in Yorkshire, a man dug down 20 feet and found bugger all, he therefore concluded that they went wireless around 200 years ago. lol

 

a lead cable joint


and how we do it today on the new cables, much quicker and easier

Below is one I did at work on a 3 phase 16 mm swa cable, 415v at 50 amps

 

Photos please. xxx

That made me laugh. x

 

A typical underground telecoms cable, they are all generally made up of groups of ten pairs, each pair consisting of two colours, up to ten pairs they are different, and around the bundle is a 'lapping tape' in the above picture you can see three lapping tapes, one is white/blue, one is white/green and the other is white/purple. Now each group of ten pairs is called a 'unit', so if say pair one is green and white, and the lapping is white/blue, then pair eleven is also green and white, but in the bundle with say the white and green lapping.. this all works fine, until that is you get someone preparing a cable who's never worked on a big one before and they chop off the lapping tapes, if you can't strip anymore sheath back then you have to 'bell out' each pair from the other end and it can take hours. Generally, they only make that mistake once.

 

Do they spend some attention on Karl Hungus as well in this cable equipment museum?

 

An early BT street cabinet, they were awful to work on.



Below is a more modern one, much tidier and easier to work on.



The top cabinets were terrible to work on, everybody hated them, the bottom ones were much better, basically you have anumber of cables, one is usually a 100 or 200 pair cable, this is known as the E side cable and goes back to the exchange, you then have several other cables usually 20 pair, these are the D side cables and feed the poles that feed the houses, E side is exchange and D side is distribution. these connect to different 'banks' as seen in the lower of the 2 pictures, one set is E side, the other D side.to connect up a certain premise to a certain number at the exchange you have a document that tells you all the job details, the D and E numbers being most important. Suppose Mrs Jones at number 1 wants a phone line connecting, we run the line from her house to the DROP POLE, what you know as a telegraph pole, on top of this is a junction box. Now in this box we have say 20 pairs, so we look on our sheet and it tells us which pair to use, so we connect one pair of the 2 pair cable from the house the DROP WIRE, to the designated cable in the box. all dropwire cables use the same colours, these will connect to a different colour pair on the DP(drop pole), then in the STREET CAB (green box) we look again at our paperwork, it may say for example that we have to connect a D side pair on number 10, to an E side pair on number 60, so we locate the correct pairs and joint them with some thin cable, on the bottom picture it's the blue/yellow stuff. it comes in various colours for different uses, in the UK blue and yellow indicates a residential line, then there's red and blue, and a couple of other colours, these indicate for example that it's a business line, or a monitored line for an alarm system. it looks complicated, but once you understand it it's quite easy, assuming it's done correctly of course.
I once spent a full day correcting faults caused by another engineer, who kept quite literally getting his wires crossed. Now it is bad enough when Mrs Jones is getting calls for Mr Smith, it's even worse when someone mixes up a residential line with the local Chinese take away, and yes it does happen! The worst one we had was an engineer who accidentally disconnected a bloke who was on holiday for two weeks, he inadvertantly crossed his line with one in a house where a couple of druggies lived, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves ringing all their mates, the bill was massive, the poor guy only found out what had happened when he returned from his holiday to be hit with a £2000 phone bill!

 

Yes 1 of the best threads on this base!

 

How about the banks of stepping switches for telephone dialing? What a racket. As a kid I was watching a Bell repairman fixing a cable on a bridge that got washed out - it was about three inches in diameter with a zillion conductors - he must have spent all day just pairing them up. Cant' beat those old crimp connectors.