Comments by "American Spirit" (@americanspirit8932) on "ATu0026T Archives: The Phone Boom of the 1950s" video.

  1. In my opinion break up of the Bell System in 1984 by judge green, was the biggest mistake ever made in the United States concerning business. Employed millions of people throughout the country with excellent benefits, the best communication system in the entire world, and they had to go break it up and put the two cents in knowing nothing about Communications. I was employed for 36 years starting with Western Electric then they changed names couple of times ended up under AT&T, Noki. Today September 14th 2022. I started working February of 1963. Seems like yesterday.
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  2. The awards or where only operators would sit, or replaced by a system called traffic service position systems, tsps. What we call a cog would be like, a bicycle wheel with spokes going out, the main central office for the tsps, wood Branch out off each spoke, and at the end of each spoke there would be a tsps system with 64 operators, each position had two operators sitting down with separate controls switches buttons, it was a lot more efficient it was all done electronically, but it eliminated thousands and thousands of operators. This was all Electronics digitally controlled. I was fortunate enough to be trained on that system, I was also trained on, what we call number one ESS, electronic switching system. These were the first electronic switch systems to be installed throughout the nation. Along with that I was trained on, ETS electronic translator systems, they would be controlling the T1 carrier systems electronically. Also trained on number four ESS, which is the first electronic digital system. The last system that I was trained on, was number five, ESS, this was a digital fiber optic switching system, still in use today. Instead of talking over a copper wire you were talking over a fiber optic. My education is priceless. You couldn't go to college to learn the stuff it was all classified and proprietary. The later systems number one and then number five ESS, used Unix as their operating system. Prior to that number one ss use the combination of, Fortran and Cobalt, hybrid. Prior to that it was all Electro mechanical crossbar and before that stepper, and before that 100% manual. We would see like on Lassie cranking the phone saying Emma connect me to Mr Smith. That was 100% manual back in those days. I had a total of 36 years service. I calculated all the hours that I spent in communication School through the company, it would be equivalent to about 17 years of regular College. All our schools were six days a week 8 hours a day, months and months at a time, schools were spread out in various parts of the country, also went to various engineering schools, within the company in Oklahoma City, King of Prussia, Minneapolis Minnesota, just the name of you. I lived in New York at that time, on Long Island.
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