Re: Mechanical Exchanges My stories
Indeed. There were twisted pairs running from the butler box to almost every room in the building, with a button in each room. It was pretty easy to connect a telephone to those - I got a job lot of antique dial phones from an embassy in London that was updating its system. I also got the old automatic exchange itself, but that was a strange device using thousands of relays, and came without a circuit diagram and not working.
The University gave up the building 20-odd years on. One of the Estate experts told me last summer that it was still in its cupboard in the basement a few years ago. I don't know if it still works - probably not! Relay contacts and a uniselector can't last that long. The new owner of the building is spending many millions restoring it, and doesn't welcome visitors, so I doubt I will visit it again.
What surprised me was how easy it was to knock up the device - it was a long weekend from start to finish to build it, then a day or so to run the cable from the cupboard to the butler call box. Fortunately, I "came by" a useful length of redundant GPO umpteen-core cable.
That satisfied my lust for telephones for a couple of years - I was doing a degree in German and ancient languages at the time, and just needed a fix of soldering and electronics. Strange, the things one does as a student!
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