Telephone free landslide victory

[hirez]

In the place where I grew up (pop. 4 + a cat), the phones were Bakelite, came with knitted cables that connected them to bell-boxes via immense multi-way plugs, and were probably installed some time in the thirties. There was also a strident external bell fitted to an outside wall of the house that could probably be heard the other side of the valley. Since those were the phones (there were a number of ur-phone-points dotted about the house, presumably installed at vast expense by men from the GPO) that were used by ma & pa, I took it that all telephones were like that. (Just as all grandfathers had one ear)

What I didn't realise, until last week in fact, was that I'd been living in an odd kind of telecoms time-capsule. Telephones had moved on in the world outside Holt Farm, and it was with a kind of ugly lurch that we moved four miles and forty years in(to) the mid seventies.

However, this left a hole in the timeline. One that smelled of warm Bakelite, phenolic and HTP. It takes the form of one of these.

Elsewhere on LJ, there are people who speak of 'soft places' (I'm not going into more detail than that because my interpretation is likely not as the originator would wish, but I guess that's in the nature of ideas; once you've emitted them, you can no more own them than you can own the wind.), while the more I think about them and the strangely layered nature of reality, the more I think there are 'soft machines'.

Ok, in the strictly Burroughsian sense - if there can be any such thing given the plastic nature of  his work - I at least tend to understand that he was talking about humans. However, I'd like to overload that phrase to mean 'Objects that are able to function as localised reality modifiers'.

Y'see, I have a 300-series telephone. It's actually one of the Portuguese variants that's been hacked about enough to work with modern BT circuitry, which I suspect gives it a lot more power. Without that mod, the object would be marooned in its own time, but it's been unceremoniously dragged into the tail-end of the 20th century when people still wanted novelty landline phones, so has something like twenty or thirty years of potential energy stored in its Bakelite casing. Thus it emits the densest cloud of Fifties I've ever encountered. I get the feeling that if it should be triggered it'll drag itself and anything else in the general area back to when it considers home with all the dispatch of a lead ingot falling down a mineshaft.

I suspect there are more of these things and that they're related to Tulpas, but I'm not sure how as yet.

I also have a shiny new Nokia, but since I'm a contrary bugger I've not got a new number. If you've got it, that's good. If you've not, that's good too.

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

You want phone wierdness ? Drive south down the A5 through Kilburn (not that I'd recommend such a thing). On your left, slap in the middle of Kilburn High Street is a big 1930s tephelone exchange. Still with the lights on, and with racks and racks of clearly visible cream box kit. WTF is it ? Some antiquarian repeater station ? It's surely not _Strowger_ ?

[edwards.livejournal.com]

You sir, scare and amuse me.

We're trying to find a reasonably priced wall-mounted phone suitable for upsetting our local exchange by exceeding all modern REN guideless; dial of course, but it will be fitted with the RJ plug.

I personally have a sneaking fondness for the trimphone. Yes, I am a sick puppy. But I'd like a late, red/burgundy one with push buttons.

[edwards.livejournal.com]

I used to love the old GPO unit where I played in Tuxford. Other than the evolution of vans from 1980, from the HA Viva and those strange Commer/Dodge vans to the more usual transits, the exhange was still full of clattery relay boards - however, on the other side on a back lane which led to the railway line, there was an older substation - which had the original relays inside it and was still functional.

Siani's dad worked on the 'phones at some point in the past. Sadly I'm not knowledgeable enough to get any benefit from his stories beyond "Hee, how lovely and easy to understand for engineers".

[edwards.livejournal.com]

And of course, I insist on using the very first GSM handset to be widely available, the Motorola International 3300 - a device which whilst only being 11 years old (positively antique in mobile terms), resembles something from 1985.

I understand the soft machines concept. Synthesizers, old analogue beasts, yearn to be free of MIDI and digitisers, and to be plugged into troublesome multi-track tape decks and synchronised with strange boxes.

Speaking of which, you may have heard of a band a bloke I was speaking to mentioned - Unit Four Plus Two? I was aware of the other bands he's been involved with, but he reckoned I wouldn't have heard of them, and neither would anyone I know. I /had/ heard the name, but had no idea what sort of music, what era - anything like that - so was pretty much lost as to what they woud be.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It's probably a trendy-yop bar. Well futile.

There must be a redundant co-lo that can be reopened as some kind of theme-bar. It could be called 'clicks and mortar'.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I suggest grovelling through the rest of that telephone site. It's quite entertaining. Though the intrinsically safe phone has been done, I think I still want a flameproof one though.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yes. Unit four + two & Hedgehoppers Anonymous were both Jonathan 'up for parole soon' King. Single was/were 'Concrete & clay' and/or 'Good news week'. I only remember this because I want a copy of the Section 25 version of 'Good news week' which is dirge-like and splendid.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

How about a non-flameproof one. After we flamed it.

(Would have been a good thing for The Man Who Has Everything tonight)


I'm quite taken by this:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/11/soft_oven.html
We've got that big roll of asbestos cloth, and plenty of woodstove grok.

[sciamachy.livejournal.com]

I want one!

Though if truth be told it would be more as an ornament than functional phone, as we tend to take calls on cordless dect phones for convenience.

Ideally we'd have a crank-it-up type phone on the wall, for visitors.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Commer van. The only vehicular transport _worse_ than a Transit. Front wheels that were narrower than the back, and set behind the steering wheel. Anyone who could reverse park one of those horors was the sort of chap who could do Rubik's cubes blindfold.

(I was a BT Spod in the early '80s)

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Kevin ran one of those for a few years, as a tiny camper. He was very fond of it, as I recall.

But it rotted. Badly.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

The last Strowger switch went in (I think) the late 80s. The banks and banks of kit is most likely a System X jobby. ISTR that BT have a few of those knocking about. They run off a 286 y'know. Don't want anything too stable in there.

Thing is, you can fit a DX220 in a cupboard. So BT have got piles and piles of land and 90% empty buildings in great places (and Cricklewood High St.) it's only a matter of time until they abandon telecoms altogether, sell off the then entirely wireless telecoms division, and become a bunch of Estate Agents.

Tell Sid he's fucked the econonmy and should be ashamed.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

we've got one of those '70s phones. i like it. it goes "ding" randomly all the time, and i can hear it ringing from the garden.

where i grew up, i used to hate phoning my friends who lived outside of the town, because they were still on the party lines, and all their neighbours would pick up the phone and listen. we all had wall mounted black rotary dial phones, rented from Bell for $10/year, with free repairs. i remember when we got the ability to use push-button phones instead, it was a big deal, and everyone sent back the lovely old black phones and got plasticky white ones.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Sid was the gas bloke, IIRC.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

A Daliphone? Yes, that could be an entertaining several days of setting fire to things in a careless manner.

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's Buzby you want to be having words with.

And my mum has a 300 series bakelite jobby which Paul did all the wiring for to enable her to use it with modern BT. She won't use anything else now.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I MP3'ed the ringer on the 700 I pulled to bits for the Pokia copy and installed it as the ring-tone on my Nokia.

It's well futile. And bloody loud - it scared the piss out of me the first time someone rang up.

I should sample the 300. I think it sounds different.