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Title: Museum Exhibit Post by: WB5IRI on June 24, 2017, 03:34:01 PM Found in the Houston Community College museum of ancient digital devices.
Title: Re: Museum Exhibit Post by: KD6VXI on June 24, 2017, 03:56:51 PM Nice.
--Shane KD6VXI Title: Re: Museum Exhibit Post by: ka1tdq on June 25, 2017, 08:48:20 PM In fact, a $10,000 radio used to send... CW.
(Photo taken at the IWCE convention this year) Jon Title: Re: Museum Exhibit Post by: W3RSW on June 26, 2017, 03:09:33 PM Hope Natural Gas Co., a spinoff (Utilities Holding Act, 1935) of Standard Oil and a predecessor co. of much of my career was using American Morse, keys and sounders Into the 1950's for gas valve and remote junction routing and manual control.
The gas co. Had linemen installing and maintaining their own poles, distribution relays and landlines along all the major pipeline rights of way. Replaced with own microwave system and tone control in the late 50's and early 60's. Then came SCADA and further. Hopefully they're not in the cloud now and if so I wonder about security. I remember leaning into the Clarksburg Hope office building window when in grade school with a young friend of mine as his father was pounding brass, working in the dispatching dept., and thinking, "that's the kind of job I want someday." ;D Perhaps the museum also has a pedestal mounted sounder/wooden box reflector, battery boxes, etc., to really show how it was in the typical RR , gas co., western Union office of the day. In the gas co. Each junction had a specific time to call in a report, everyone could hear the signals coming up the line to their station's time slot. If a station missed, the main op. would query once, twice and skip to next. Most nighttime misses were operator sleeping and there'd be hell to pay. Some of the bigger stations, compressor stations and major junctions has the luxury of phone comm, rotary magneto ringers on phones, certain no. Of rings per station, etc. but calling up was mostly unnecessary as the remotes would call in reports precisely in their time slot. Always hang up after your report to keep line load down but curiously the signals got weaker if a report was skipped. Many would wait with bated breath to hear what the super. would say. ...usually colorful. If nothing, then who was zoned out too? Title: Re: Museum Exhibit Post by: WB5IRI on June 27, 2017, 01:04:14 PM Wow, had no idea they were still using sounders into the '50s. I'll let the museum guys know so they can update their info card. Used to have some batteries and sounder boxes, but they have disappeared into the void. Would really like to locate some for the museum of ancient digital and computing devices, so if anyone has anything they'd like to donate, let me know. We have no budget, so donations only, please! This stuff is 99% computer related, but I would love to talk the museum into adding an amateur radio section.
BTW, "museum" may be a bit of a misnomer, as the whole thing consists of half a dozen large glass display cases in the hallway leading to our Digital and Information Technology center. 73, Doug Title: Re: Museum Exhibit Post by: KD6VXI on June 28, 2017, 01:38:47 PM Hope Natural Gas Co., a spinoff (Utilities Holding Act, 1935) of Standard Oil and a predecessor co. of much of my career was using American Morse, keys and sounders Into the 1950's for gas valve and remote junction routing and manual control. The gas co. Had linemen installing and maintaining their own poles, distribution relays and landlines along all the major pipeline rights of way. Replaced with own microwave system and tone control in the late 50's and early 60's. Then came SCADA and further. Hopefully they're not in the cloud now and if so I wonder about security. I remember leaning into the Clarksburg Hope office building window when in grade school with a young friend of mine as his father was pounding brass, working in the dispatching dept., and thinking, "that's the kind of job I want someday." ;D Perhaps the museum also has a pedestal mounted sounder/wooden box reflector, battery boxes, etc., to really show how it was in the typical RR , gas co., western Union office of the day. In the gas co. Each junction had a specific time to call in a report, everyone could hear the signals coming up the line to their station's time slot. If a station missed, the main op. would query once, twice and skip to next. Most nighttime misses were operator sleeping and there'd be hell to pay. Some of the bigger stations, compressor stations and major junctions has the luxury of phone comm, rotary magneto ringers on phones, certain no. Of rings per station, etc. but calling up was mostly unnecessary as the remotes would call in reports precisely in their time slot. Always hang up after your report to keep line load down but curiously the signals got weaker if a report was skipped. Many would wait with bated breath to hear what the super. would say. ...usually colorful. If nothing, then who was zoned out too? I can tell you that in the Baker Oil Fields (Bakersfield) most all SCADA is done via 400 mhz and 900 mhz band. Point to point, I think the last ones I worked in had 13 element yagi antennas. I'm sure, at some point, some idiot will think it's a good idea to make them hackable and accessible. But today, in Chevrons fields, they are point to multipoint. --Shane KD6VXI |