The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall, I cut myself while shaving,
now I can't make a call, couldn't get much worse, but if I could they would,
for nearly both of us, best expect the worst. I hope I've done this good for nearly both!
phone freaks. This week we have I guess kind of an unusual program for you. We
have a special guest here who is somebody that I've known for quite some
time but as is the way with computer hackers and phone freaks we've never
actually met. In fact what's interesting here is I'm not exactly sure how I
should introduce this person. In fact what I will do is I will tell you
simply that this person is is located in Texas and ask him to introduce himself
as he sees fit. Go ahead. Yes, this is Mr. French here in unknown place in Texas. Now
I should relate the story as to how you got the name of Mr. French. It's
certainly not from family affair and this goes back to to my active hacking
days. So let's let's go back to a computer system or a computerized
telephone system. One of the first of its kind back in the early 80s. How many
people out there have ever played with something called the IBM audio
distribution system? Anybody out there? Let's see a show of hands. ADS systems
they were called which is pretty silly actually because the last words last
letter stood for system anyway. I discovered one of those one day while I
was I was scanning out the the 800 exchange of my choice and you know you
dial 800 number you dial 800 you know 444 1212 it would ring somebody would
pick up say Avis rent-a-car whatever you'd say sorry wrong number or if you
were more rude you would hang up then you would dial 444 1213 and then 1214
1215 sometimes you would get a computer tone and if you did that you'd you know
if you had a computer you would get your computer out and call it that way and
see what kind of computer tone it was but in this particular case this
particular case I dialed a number and I was greeted by a female recording saying
please keypress your last name and so I did that I I entered my last name using
the touchtone keys you know the letters on the touchtone keypad and it spat out
a name at me it wasn't my name but it was somebody else's name and then it
asked me for a password I was intrigued by this I said oh what happens if I get
the password right where do I go what do I get out of this so I forget exactly
how I was able to do this I figured out that that the system belonged to IBM and
I think that was probably my first password was the word IBM and that got
me into this thing called the audio distribution system of a vast network
not not as vast as some of today's but for the time extremely vast where you
could send voice messages voice man this was something completely new and
different to us you could send voice messages to other people that were on
the system now this thing had an 800 number so we were able to call it from
anywhere in the country and communicate with other people now why do we want to
communicate with IBM employees well we didn't they were pretty boring actually
but we were able to find other people that were interested in obtaining
mailboxes on these on these accounts and you know it wasn't really a question of
hurting anybody because the IBM people that we were using their accounts they
were not using it themselves they were not using them so we simply communicated
back-and-forth amongst ourselves and we figured out ways to use the system that
the IBM people never really thought of they looked upon the whole thing as as
work and we looked upon it as recreation now how does this all tie into mr.
French okay we're getting to that one day I was on the system talking back and
forth with the different people that were on there when all of a sudden well
not all of a sudden I guess I just logged on and found this message from
somebody I forget who but it was a message that it stood out for some
reason I think the it didn't have a return name everybody was assigned a
name and the lady would say your name but this person sent us a message and he
had no name so I was intrigued by this and I replied to the person and I said
well what else can you do besides somehow erase your name and that started
a dialogue going and through that dialogue I was connected to another
group of hackers that was on the same system and one of those hackers is the
person who is with us on the phone and the name mr. French comes from the name
that he appropriated on that particular audio distribution system is that is
that somewhat correct as far as your recollection that's just about it as
far as I can tell now let's talk about those good old IBM ADS encounters it's
quite a system wasn't it yes they don't make them like they used to you could uh
in fact you could actually take someone else's voicemail message and insert and
delete just like on any word processor you could insert words and take other
people's words out and change the sentences around you can't do that
anymore well maybe you'll be able to do that soon but give us an example well
see so I could say I am an American and you could just say I American I mean
that's not a very good example but you could actually take enough words out of
so and sentence to change it around and make it make them say something that
they ordinarily would not even say how exactly would you be able to do this
stuff well it had an insert and delete function you know like you could press
one to add a comment at the beginning of the message or press two to insert it
right there you know you could freeze yeah yeah I remember that you know what
that's something that I have not yet seen on any of the other like phone mail
systems but yeah you could insert something at any point in the message
and if you were able to to duplicate their voice and you're quite good at
that actually you could make them say some some rather interesting things yes
if you had a you know if you were good at editing like say you could stop it
exactly where you wanted it and erase erase erase the right amount of words
and then scoot the end of the message back and make it bump into the beginning
and remove the middle so to speak you could totally change it around and get
people in trouble sending out messages they were you could even make a
derogatory message out of one that was not even intended to be derogatory and
needless to say if you did that to some IBM employees could really cause quite a
stir in the in the office now I don't think there are any IBM ADS systems
still out there and I'm doing it myself calling it an ADS system are you aware
of any remaining ones they seem to scrapped them all they have replaced them
with some other type of thing and I'm not sure I'm not even sure what it's
called they've made it virtually hacker proof I have not run into anybody that's
been able to crack this type of system are you talking yet can you talk about
the old ADS was you could go step by step and as soon as you turn the wrong
way and put the wrong like say if your code was one two three four five seven
and you try to put in one two three four five six it would say invalid password
one two three four five six you said oh I did something wrong so you just
changed the last one up until it matched and you could eventually scan out
someone's password in a matter of seconds uh-huh yeah it was a very simple system
to to work with and also a lot of the accounts had four different passwords
for four different types of users you had your guest your secretary your
family account and your personal account and if you just had it happen to have a
secretary account which didn't have full privileges you could just keep changing
the secretary password until it said you can't choose that password because it
conflicts with one of your other passwords and you'd say hey I found a
password and you could get it very easily because all you had to do is
change it to three digits and if the first three digits match the first three
digits of the other password you could figure it out quite easily yeah there's
another voicemail system that works very similar it doesn't have as many
privileges but it it's called the Express Messenger I don't even know who
makes it but I've run into it a thing before and it's another one that guides
you into it tells you what you've just done wrong and you just don't do that
again and and if you run into a secretary password it'll let you go
through there and hunt around until you find the main password mm-hmm but it's
not made by IBM I'm not sure who makes it though now tell us how you got into
this this ADS system the one that we met on I was talking to some phone
enthusiast friends of mine and there was a phone number in my city there was a
weight loss number and it was like oh I can't even remember the phone number but
it was like one digit was transposed somebody dialed the number and got
please keep press your last name and the lady told me that the computer sounded
military she said I think that belongs to a military installation and then I
got on here I got on the system and found out that it was some sort of a
weird voicemail system and I learned how to record a message and send it to
myself but not to anyone else for quite a long time and that's when I finally
learned how to you know send messages to other users and that's when I bumped
into you people because a friend of mine said I took a mailbox and I
sacrificed it I sent out a voicemail message to everyone on the system just
everyone he just spent all night long sending voicemail that same message out
it was like a broadcast and you people got it and so did all the other IBM
employees they got the message and this one somehow or another we linked up yeah
well that was the message that that I had received that had no name on it and
it piqued my curiosity so I replied to it and that is what what led me to you
it's incredible we both dialed numbers virtually at random or you knew
somebody else that had done that and that is how we were able to meet and
learn quite a few things from each other to lots of people out there are doing
this have done this in the past and you know it's sad to see that that a lot of
people think that this is something bad I think it's something great is
something you can learn a lot from we never did anything malicious to the
system we learned a lot from it and by using that particular system we became
much more adept at at using other systems for other people and giving
advice to how certain things should be set up communications is something that
that so few of us really are encouraged to to play with a lot now mr. French is
down there in Texas he knows quite a bit about about telephone setups he's he's
very good at at describing exactly what they sound like how they were put into
place what I'm going to ask you to do now is give us a very brief history of
phone switches and if you want to model that along the ones that that have been
down where you are tell us steps crossbars ESS all that kind of thing
okay one of the great desires of Alexander Graham Bill was to come up
with a automatic telephone something that you didn't have to turn the crank
or flash the operator and have the operator dial the number for you and he
always wanted to come up with this unfortunately somebody else beat him to
it a man by the last name of Stroger he invented a Stroger switch which was
nothing but a relay and a set of contacts almost like an old-fashioned TV
tuner you know we go channel two three four five six seven eight you know when
you spin the dial you're selecting channels this picture in your mind that
same little tuner on your TV said that you're spinning around being motor
driven and the thing that controls the motor is your rotary dial phones you
remember those things that you spend a little wheel around it did it did it did
it every time it clicks it's like selecting a another channel and finally
the bit what layer was the bell system bought this patent but for many years
they another phone company GTE which is later became GTE actually had automatic
dial systems before Bell did but that's one of the earlier types of automatic
dial systems and there's still one or two of them around today in the United
States they have real strange sounding rings if you want me to I have a sample
recorded on tape of the last step office of its type oh please yes what kind of
step office is this and where is it located I don't know the name of the
town off hand it's in Connecticut some place I can't remember the name of the
town can you tell us the remains in it belong it's an old Western electric you
know the Bell system back when it was the is this is this the famous
Willow Mantic Connecticut I think that is the name of Willow Mantic yes and
this would be area code 203 what's the exchange 423 423 so I don't know if we
have any listeners in the 423 exchange in the 203 area code but you're the last
one of its kind so if you don't like it if it's old if it takes a long time to
die a long distance just say it's an antique it's been around since the late
40s now what kind specifically is this again this is a step-by-step switch and
it's made by Western Electric and it's been nicknamed by phone freaks as a city
ring step office because only in large cities do you hear a ring that sounds
or did you hear a ring that sounds like this I remember that ring well from my
early days in New York almost every phone seemed to sound like that in fact
well every phone sounded different you know now they all sound the same yeah
they're all plastic to me all of the phones rang like that in the city that
I'm from and all of the phones rang a little bit different in the outlying
areas like if you lived in an outlying area it had a different kind of step
ring and also teenagers have discovered that they could talk in between the
little space you know you get a ring and then there's a couple seconds of silence
and then another ring what you're going to hear here is one of those rings with
teenagers talking in the background here just a second ok did you hear the human
voice there yes I did I did I only heard one human voice but there was just
before it started to ring again and the number answered so I didn't get anything
more than that but that's the way the rings rang out in the country or in the
outlying areas uh-huh now when you say that the step phone that the step office
that you played us the ring from before is the last of its kind you don't mean
it's the last step of its kind I mean you don't mean it's it's the last step
office in the United States no no I would guess that there's less than a
hundred step offices left in the US not including Canada I presume there's
quite a few still in Canada but in the US proper the mainland US not
including Alaska or Hawaii or Puerto Rico there's not very many of them left
there's quite a few in Texas but a few in Kansas now we may be getting you know
all kinds of letters and telegrams and people saying hey wait a minute my ring
sounds like that but why would somebody's ring sound like that if it's
not a step office well they also have crossbar which is a later invention it's
kind of like step is the oldest and what we have now is computer-generated thing
and it's new it's like I said earlier it's plastic it's just a computer that
switches things nowadays but in between the old and the new is the middle and it
is called crossbar now I think a good example of city ring crossbar is but
there aren't any more in 212 area code they wipe them all out I know of one in
212 do you well 9x has claimed that they've wiped them all out in 212 are
you sure area code 2 1 2 5 5 5 1 2 1 2 is directory assistance call it you'll
that's a very good point that's a very good point I guess they weren't counting
that but that's that's true I do remember that that you get that I was
thinking of the 7 1 8 7 6 2 exchange I know that one is a city ring crossbar a
nice deep baritone ring unless they've cut it over sometimes they cut things
over overnight and and you get this the same generic ring as everything else but
you want to give us some some yeah have somewhere around here you caught me off
guard I have 7 1 8 7 6 9 crossbar that's probably the same area yeah let's see
here here's the ring to it
I don't know where what part of Brooklyn or Brooklyn or whatever 7 6 9 I know it's
Brooklyn well I know people can find out by dialing 7 6 9 9 9 0 1 well he
says he says live from Brooklyn but I don't know what section of Brooklyn okay
yeah it's somewhere in Brooklyn then but that's not too hard to figure out you
simply call somebody at random in the middle of the night and ask him where
they are when you woke them up and they'll tell you what what part of
Brooklyn and we arranged for a street corner to meet on and things like that
so now how many different kinds of crossbar are there well there was two
basic types they had the old number one crossbar and the number five which is
the more advanced and there's still quite a few number five crossbars left
in the United States in fact the 2600 office the hacker quarterly is located
in a number five crossbar that I don't think is ever going to be switched over
to to something electronic or digital I'm beginning to wonder and some of you
people remember when a dial tone used to sound like this
well then the musical note-sounding thing that we have nowadays yeah no I do
remember that that was a dial tone you know you can still go to places in
Europe and hear dial tones that sound like you know like like people
sputtering you know and there's places I think in Ohio that are like that too
there's places in Texas you can still found that dial tone but not not that
one there's there's other ones there's even more harsh ones you know the kind I
mean I don't happen to have any samplers of that particular one but they
sound like a like an electric belt driven sander or something yeah you got
it that's it like somebody stuck their finger in a light socket or something
uh-huh and in fact it's those if you look at the phone books in those
particular areas they describe telephone service to people as if they had never
seen a telephone before they actually spell out a word that that denotes the
dial tone it's like something like that it fills up a whole line yeah and then
they have the same thing for busy signals and for rings they go bring
bring if you hear that's noise that means it's a ring and that means the
person's telephone is ringing and then the phone book will also say that means
that someone's talking and you can't talk to them right now right it's it's
really something and I hope there's people out there collecting those old
phone books because there's quite a few interesting things I have a real rare
thing on tape what's that this was recorded by me in the 1960s of a step
office that had okay let me explain to the people if you call a very large
company let's say Chemical Bank or something they may have a couple
thousand lines at Chemical Bank okay as soon as you dial that number it rings
there's no waiting you know there's there may be a hundred people using the
phone at the same time and it's not going to be busy because the computer
automatically selects a line that's not busy and it just rings it it's just like
an in the wink of an eye it knows which line is not busy and you don't even
realize that you've bypassed a couple hundred people that are talking on the
phone but in the old days they had to go through an old step hunt group and it
was called a a rotary hunt group actually and you're gonna hear the thing
actually touching in other words when you know like say seven four seven three
oh one one one one used to be big businesses always had one one because it
was the first number in that group and it would go one two one three one four
one five and it would hunt and I want you to hear that what happens before the
busy signal you're going to hear this number hunting through hundreds of lines
before it finally ends up being busy check this out okay
did you hear the busy at the end I cut it short but yeah I heard the busy and I
also heard what sounded like the beginning of a busy busy signal before
that oh yeah well you were actually hearing it run over all the busy's it
would test each individual line and occasionally it would test it just as
the tone was going off so you hear like that and it finally ended up as seven
four seven three oh nine nine or three oh nine oh I'm sorry uh-huh and that
was the actual number that that was from that numbers no longer in existence it
was a power company and their line was hardly ever busy when it did when it was
busy though you've got one whale of a long wait just to find out if you were
going to get a busy signal uh-huh so what was that being called during some
kind of an emergency or something actually the office cut over to
electronic switching and when they cut the cable they shorted all the lines to
that phone number out and I took advantage of it and was still able to
call into that old step office after I had cut to ESS the electronic switching
system which is the the other one we're going to get to in this two minutes and
what when they cut the cable all the wires shorted together and it made every
number in that seven four seven three oh one one one two one three all the way
down to seven four seven three oh nine oh and I got to record that hunt group
and it was I'm sure at times you would call the power company like during a
storm there was a lot of outages and a lot of people would have to sit there
and wait for all that incredible you know I recall sometimes and I haven't
heard this recently but I do remember it in the past and I think it was with
with electronic switches where I'd call a number and I'd hear half of a ring and
then it would turn into a busy signal what made that happen
oh okay that's a new thing I haven't heard it recently but that is like a pay
telephone it's off of the hook and no one has dialed anything on it but when
it would test the line it would it would ring and then turn to a busy what that
is certain types of lines don't have dial tones on them it's crazy as that is
some lines are for like incoming calls only if you're at the other end and you
just pick up that line you hear nothing you will not get a dial tone and the old
coin operated phones many years ago we had to put a dime in first would do that
you know you would not get a dial tone on that pay phone unless you put money
in it the bad old days I remember that as well I remember rotary pay phones all
over the place anyway if you were to call a pay phone while it was off the
hook it go ring click Bob you know you would get that and in fact even it would
do that with the ESS when they first if you were ever in an area that was still
not dial tone first you'd get that with ESS it go ring click but it was very
frustrating I remember there are some numbers like the Department of Motor
Vehicles were trying to reach them and you hear the ring and say oh I finally
got through and you'd open the champagne and everything like that except then it
would turn into a busy signal and it would be all over also in the olden days
before you got a disconnected recording that said the number you've reached has
been disconnected you knew that that recording was going to come on even
before the number rang because you get a ring just kind of like a ring and it
almost sound like the number answered but it didn't and then another ring
would pop on and you'd get this result
any minute now it's a step opposite here goes
we're sorry you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no
longer in service if you feel you have reached this recording an error please
check the number or try your call again but did you hear the little noise just
before it even rang it went yeah I did a couple of a couple of comments on that
first of all she sounded like she was semi underwater do you notice that it's
just a wrinkled up old tape now that's an actual tape yeah it's just like an
old yeah it's just an old tape it's not my tape but it's like if you if you
remember 15 20 years ago when people had 8-track tapes they were bad about
melting they would leave the 8-track out and on the dashboard of the car
especially down here in the south the Sun would melt them and by the time
they'd get back out to the car they'd play their music it sounded like it was
coming underwater because the tape was wrinkled it's the same thing the tape
would just get worn and wrinkled and needed to be replaced that's all it's
just you know anytime a cassette or any kind of tape gets hot or wrinkled it
will sound like it's coming from underwater well you know I've heard I've
heard some of those recordings grind to a halt sometimes I've heard some of them
even going backwards oh yes I have to all kinds of bizarre whatever telephone
company it's quite embarrassed have you ever heard it have you ever heard
recording turned up too loud though distorted you mean yes would you well
this was more than distorted do you have facilities to be able to call out I can
arrange something is there is there a number you'd like me to yes I don't
really want to publicize this number or not is there a way that we can mute this
or I guess it wouldn't hurt to publish it it's just a disconnected recording
that's turned up entirely too loud let's let's let our listeners have some fun
with that okay you people out there overload the central office in this town
it's a small town dial 1 2 1 4 4 5 2 11 11 and listen to what I would advise
holding the phone at least at arm's length or you'll be very sorry okay
let's let's see if we can connect to that hold the line okay let's see we get
here that certainly is something I sound like she was talking through a
hollow pipe now those numbers she gave at the end can you tell us what those
mean 2 1 4 4 5 I guess that's the exchange that's just the identifier on
the exchange and you'll have to pardon me that kind of that knocked all the
earwax out of my ears right there that was loud now there's other numbers that
you hear at the end of recording sometimes to hear 2 1 2 4 T or something
like that that's the long-distance companies MCI and Sprint have them like
to CL is like MCI and let's see what is the one for Sprint it's something like
411 something or other you know they just that's where the phone companies
personal use to identify what telephone exchange is handling the call or where
the trouble may be at if you get a trouble report on it or something and
AT&T gets those too right yes AT&T would say your call cannot be completed as
dialed such-and-such 2 1 2 3 T and then the switchman knows which which switch
is handling that uh-huh and people like you know which switch is handling so
you hear the area code of where that recording is coming out of and you say
oh okay there's where the problem lies it's not like say if you're calling a
number in Los Angeles and all of a sudden you hear we're sorry all circuits
are busy now 702 3T then you know somewhere out in Las Vegas you know I
should say in Nevada someplace there's trouble so they they know to contact the
good people in Nevada and say you've got a problem we can't call Los Angeles and
it's blocked in your area okay we're getting some more stories but first I'd
like you to complete the saga of phone switches let's go to electronic switches
now okay I'm going to show you some this is also taken from 7 1 8 7 6 9 which is
now gone it's an unusual thing what they used to do back in ye olden days was
they would take the old dial tone and break it up and that would be your busy
signal for example the old dial tone was a buzz so this is this was your busy
signal okay when they started changing over to new dial tones your new busy
signal didn't sound like that anymore it sounded like the dial tone of today well
that embarrassed me real nicely hey you can picture your dial tone going on and
off but anyway whoops there we go okay so that's actually a busy signal even
though it sounds like a dial tone yeah that was also 7 1 8 7 6 9 now that
office is gone you're not going to get that anymore but sometimes when you'd
call your friend John over in Brooklyn his line would go Bob hang up call right
back same number you know you'd get the different one now isn't it wasn't there
another exchange in Brooklyn like that too well 9 5 1 did that but it never did
switch it never did have two different types of busy it only had that the dial
tone kind but this one 7 6 9 had two different power plants in it and so when
one of them was overloaded and all you know all the circuits were busy on that
one particular busy signal generator it would switch you over to the other one
as a backup so I used to fool with that thing all day long calling and calling
and calling and get the pop and then calling and get the musical note coming
one now let's go to electronic okay electronic everything's uniform in Los
Angeles and New York and Dallas and Chicago it doesn't matter where you go
in Canada all the rings are the same rate the rings are the same pitch the
rings and the busies and everything are all exactly the same and there's not
much to say about those things except for they work fast they break down a lot
have you noticed lately phones have been breaking down a lot on the East
Coast and the West Coast both well phone systems the phones seem to be working
just fine but the phone systems yes yes the systems well the phones don't break
down but without the system to connect it up the phones might as well be broken
not necessarily because there's always other ways of making a phone call if you
know how to do it you know if you know how to use the other phone companies or
if you know how to route things yes but sometimes your local phone exchange that
provide you with a dial tone if you pick up and cannot get a dial tone that's a
problem yes yeah you're in a world of hurt yeah what was that actually what
was happening I was on the impression just wasn't allowing certain calls to go
through yes well it's a computer controlled which the computer
unfortunately controls every single connection and there's no independent
backup there's no backup at all which I think is crazy but sometimes the
exchange itself well it'll just die and there's nothing you can do about it as
we're stepping crossbar the old electromechanical ones only certain
parts would die like seven six let's see seven six nine nine nine and then the
last two digits may be out of pocket but seven six nine one one seven three for
example don't call it number by the way the one ones may still work and the two
twos may still work and so forth the ones group in the you know only parts of
the old prefix would die due to too many calls going to that one area as we're
nowadays when the exchange dies everybody's gone thousands and thousands
of people are out of phone service you know it's it's it's interesting because
it's as if the people in charge don't seem to think of it as people anymore
they just think of it as another computer system and computer systems go
down from maintenance and they have problems and they crash but you know you
would never do that in the old days with step and crossbar you'd realize that
there were human beings on the other end of those things and there was always
somebody real handy you see a lot of people don't realize this but the
telephone exchange had employees inside the building 24 hours a day seven days a
week there was always somebody there at 3 in the morning you'd call down there
and that's which one would be probably asleep but he'd answer the phone in case
there was a problem sometimes they play dominoes in the middle of night anyway
nowadays the computers have gotten rid of all the employees almost no telephone
exchanges have employees they're all computers the computer is the employee
now I think they've got a whole lot of money on payroll we might be getting a
little ahead of ourselves here because let's let's just focus on the early days
of ESS now what were the first we had ESS number one yeah you had ESS number
one he actually had one before that and I don't even know what it was called it
was an experimental exchange and it had lots of tubes like an old-timey radio
that you had to turn on and wait for it to warm up it actually was controlled
with computer tubes like technology from the 50s and about what year is that I
think it was like 1962 okay and it stayed around for about a year and then
they got rid of it and then it was somewhere in New York City and I think
they had another one in the Washington DC area just like it and then they had
the ESS number one the electronic switching system and the way they would
do it they would replace a an old electromechanical office from the 40s or
the 50s and let's say you had telephone prefixes for 251 252 253 254 all the way
down to 259 they would replace 251 and maybe 252 you know they would replace it
just small bits at a time they were worried that the computer would blow up
they actually were afraid the computer would fall and fail well computers do
that as we've seen recently so maybe that wasn't such a invalid assumption
yeah so maybe we should go back to the old days of gradually turning these new
systems on and you know a month later they would as the terminology says they
would cut over the rest of the prefix a little bit at a time so it's not to
overload the poor computer well nowadays they just step right in there
and they could over hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people all in
one shot and then there's no turning back as they also used to keep the old
equipment around in case the computer failed they could switch it back on all
of a sudden they don't do that anymore now let's go past the ESS number one we
had the the 1a I believe yeah you got the 1a which is probably the finest
computerized system it's kind of like we reached a peak when we hit the 1a and
then as far as I'm concerned we went downhill when they came up with all
these DMS 100s made in Canada well DMS 100 is Northern Telecom a different
company entirely it's made in it's a foreign thing it's made in Canada it has
a heavy I'm sorry I'm sorry all you people in Canada but it is a high
failure rate I don't like it I've noticed DMS 100s have horrible
problems with with crosstalk yeah and you're on those things and all of a
sudden you hear all kinds of people talking at the same time and none of
them can hear you of course well sure you don't even need a dial why need a
dial you can just talk to everybody at the same time but do you think the the
five ESS from Western Electric do you think that was going downhill from the
1a yes it is but it's not as crummy as the one made in Canada the thing we were
just discussing so what is better about the 1a it holds a high volume of calls
it's a smaller and faster machine you might say if you were talking about
computer systems it has a faster clock in it for lack of a better you know I'm
saying it's speedier it processes calls ten times faster than the old one and
and it didn't crash and fall and burn like the new digital offices do so it
was sort of like a cross between the step crossbar and the SS took the good
points of all of them it started it well the ESS one it's kind of like a
computerized crossbar office it worked like a crossbar office and the switches
were very similar to the old crossbar switch except for they were very small
I say that's where a crossbar switch was probably about three feet long and about
foot and a half tall that's where the ESS one switches were you know like you
could fit them in the palm of your hand right now there's there's a couple other
digital switches to write some some rather crummy ones too I believe I would
imagine there's probably as much as 10 or 15 of them on the market you know
worldwide uh-huh and I couldn't even begin to name them all and one of the
equipment manufacturers is out of business and unfortunately I am talking
on that switch oh really what kind of switch is it it's made by ITT
International Telephone and Telegraph it's called a system 12 and they got out
of the switching business which I think they had no business getting in it in
the first place they apparently did not know what they were doing when they
designed this thing and was this a switch that used to be on Long Island
and got transported down to Texas that's connected to mine this is connected like
the next community down is like seven or eight miles away and it used to be in
Syosset New York and they they just wheeled it down to Texas for some reason
they sure did I watched them unloaded it actually came out of a big truck and
9x or whoever was in charge there got smart and said well this is a piece of
junk you know so let's get rid of this let's put it off on some stupid
southerners okay can can you give us an example of some of the some of the
quote-unquote features of this ITT switch you have well it has some
features about it that the phone company doesn't want for example if you're if
you have call waiting and you are calling somebody and the number still
ringing in the part of your calling hasn't answered yet let's say you get
call waiting well number one you can't answer your call waiting too
successfully if the number is busy or the number has not answered yet you
flash the button to answer your call waiting go hello and because the party
you were calling did not answer the party who's calling you on your call
waiting it's not going to get charged if they're calling long-distance really
did I say that no no wait a minute let me get make sure I understand this
you're calling somebody on your phone they're not answering while you're
calling them you get a call on your call waiting you flip over to them they won't
get charged because the person you called never answered right so I know
when I discovered this I think I made light of it a whole lot and AT&T called
here about once a week wanting to know why so many calls were going to this
number and people were not getting charged what did you tell them no uh-huh
and does it still work to this day no they finally cured the problem they did
a software update in this office but I bet you there's quite a few of them
around that it still works that way but unfortunately you could not answer your
call waiting without dumping the original call that's where if you had a
real what I call a real Bell system type ESS 1a you could put that call on hold
and let the number ring over there say can you hold on a minute I'm calling
somebody and then click back over and explain to one person or the other you
were gonna have to get rid of one or the other well you have to deliberately call
a number you have to make choices in this life right right I would
deliberately call a number that I knew wouldn't answer like a business that was
closed at nighttime and somebody would come in I'd answer call waiting and they
could talk for free that's incredible and you know I really don't see anything
wrong with that either because it's their system you're using it and you're
not doing anything you're not supposed to do and no one's getting billed it's
not it's not like it's costing anything uh-huh the other drawback of having this
type of thing your three-way calling was all screwed up I had three-way calling
and call waiting at the same time and the following funny incidences would
happen I'd say listen I'm getting another call hold on a second sometimes
I would answer my call waiting and it would add the call waiting on to the
three-way well that's that's not what you want to do sometimes I might get a
call from somebody that doesn't like the other person that's on the other side
it happened to me one time and after I finally hung up they called me back said
I thought you didn't talk to them anymore fascinating that's an
embarrassing situation that'll get you into now do you have equal access down
there no I sure do not you do not have equal access so you can't take a long
distance I don't have the choice to choose between Sprint MCI etc etc now
you're you're on a you're on an electronic or is it a digital switch
you're on it is a digital unfortunate switch well you're on a you know state
of the art in there in their words switch why don't you have access to
equal access to other phone companies well it's not the switches fault this
time I can't this which would handle equal access it's just the phone
company is cheap and they don't want to put in the equal access trunk what phone
company do you use it's an independent called United Telephone Company okay so
just to catch our listeners up to this not only are you on this ITT weird
digital switch that nobody else seems to have but you're not part of the Bell
system you're part of an independent phone company thank you for using AT&T
it's just you get a weird ring and a nasally sounding woman usually asleep in
the middle of the night say what do you want why are you calling the operator
for leave me alone now just to give our listeners a sense of this imagine if say
the Upper West Side had a different phone company from the rest of New York
City imagine if New York Telephone a subsidiary of 9x had all of New York
State and all of New York City except for this one little part and that was
you know New York City telephone or some crazy outfit like that that's kind of
the situation of mr. French down there in Texas is in he's got an independent
phone company in fact there's lots of independent phone companies all
throughout the nation there have been for years ever since before the
divestiture what are some of the characteristics of having an independent
phone company that we might not know well it's just unstandard business
practices you know you you may have lived in a I used to live in a large
metropolitan area and when I moved here was like you mean you've never heard of
that oh they've never heard of centralized repair service they've never
heard of oh let's see what was it they told me I couldn't have touchstone when
I moved here and I just brought my touchstone phone plugged it in and it
worked they told you you couldn't have it at all yeah they said you cannot have
it it's not available in your I said sure it is I showed them the touchstone
so I pressed a couple of them you know I said see and they had never seen
anything like that before I guess yeah no one down here has in this area I'm in
no one has touchstone that's that's incredible what else it's one of those
type of systems and unfortunately now 9x and a few other companies are starting
to adopt their bad habits you can let the phone ring like say let's say there
was a radio station they had a contest so you called in or maybe a talk
show they had it fixed so like Larry King can I use Larry King as an example
is a good example for anything okay I mean gosh everybody's heard of Larry
King you call up the Larry King show and they let it ring for hours before they
pick up that way you don't get charged for just a ring right same thing at the
AI we let people stay on the phone for hours sometimes calling in and they
don't get charged till we pick up they may not even get anybody they're calling
but they yeah hold on and it doesn't charge them well here you let it ring
three minutes and it times out and goes we're sorry the call you've made does
not answer please try your call again later and that's now expanding to
Pittsburgh Washington DC Baltimore you know the general Washington DC area and
San Diego California has that so if you know somebody in those places or if you
know a business that's closed and they don't have an answer machine call the
number and let it ring for three and a half minutes and you'll get a recording
saying your call is being disconnected because the party you're calling does
not answer that's that's really serious because that's something that changes
the rules of making a phone call I mean used to be that you could you could call
a radio program and let it ring and ring and ring and you never got charged and
you you know you could stay on the line until the person picked up and there was
there was no problem there there was never a problem now is it only AT&T
that's doing this it's only AT&T and I got to tell you I was listening to the
Larry King show and they were griping about it they said we keep dropping
calls friends if you want to get on the show we're not I hate to plug a
long-distance company he said but if you want to call me call through something
other than AT&T and he told you how to do it he says use MCI or Sprint or
something because for example dial 1 0 3 3 3 plus 1 and our phone number and he
said you'll get through and you'll be able to ring and MCI won't charge you
and it will not disconnect after three minutes you know we're not getting paid
to say that but apparently we're not going to be able to have a talk show
without doing it this way that's something that we had 2600 and off the
hook are going to be devoting some time to we'll talk to some people in the in
the phone company business and find out just what's what's at work here because
that's that's a serious issue you know you might say well you know you have no
business staying on the line for for three minutes if somebody doesn't pick
up now that's not true you always had the right to stay on the phone and and
let it ring until somebody picks up that's just you know basic common sense
there and to change that I mean you don't need to change that okay if you
could do that in the 1950s you certainly don't need to free up the the bandwidth
now in the 1990s it's if anything it's a lot cheaper to let a phone ring 25 30
times or you know 300 times even as long as there's no voice path being cleared
so it's to me it represents sheer greed on AT&T's part.
Emmanuel let me tell you something they are cheapening our Cadillac phone system for
years America's had if you'll pardon the expression a Cadillac phone system in
Europe has always had what I've just what we've just been talking about you
can only call certain places and after so many minutes it would go quick and
just drop your call you wouldn't even get an explanation and America has
always been so proud of the fact that we have a standardized phone system
everything was a standard number of digits we had three digit area codes
everywhere some places they have anywhere from one to nine digit area
codes other places will let it ring two or three maybe four minutes and then
just click drop the call we're lowering our standards and our good phone system
is gone well it's really sad. I agree with what you're saying but at the same
time I do think it was necessary for what Judge Green did only because you
know back then back in in in the early 80s the phone company was so huge so
monolithic and everywhere you know one out of ten people worked for the phone
company and it was it was local it was national it was international and there
was no competition and you know I'd sure like to see competition on the local
level now for New York Telephone it's something I keep going on about I think
competition is healthy now the way they've done it here it's messing a lot
of people up because they weren't used to anything other than the way it was
it's my hope that you know within a few years things will start leveling out and
you'll be able to actually make intelligent choices and get some value
for your money I want to bring up one point by the way do you remember in the
60s the way the Gestapo telephone company you could call it Gestapo bail
telephone because you remember when it was illegal to hook up your own phone
did oh yeah I just got caught and fined for it did you really I always just felt
guilty about it I thought anybody actually got caught for hooking up there
I knew people that took phones and hid them under the bed in case the phone
company were to come out I had a speaker phone that I hooked up phone company was
making random checks and they randomly checked my line and they said we detect
the presence of a spare telephone that you're not paying for can we come out
and take a look and I said sure I ripped the wire out of the wall so quick
it's just darn near destroyed the plaster well it's a good thing they
didn't have the power to just kick in your door and check anyway yeah they
were probably just a slight bit away from that power though where we would
have charged me a $500 fine if they'd found a phone hooked up illegally we're
starting to run out of time but I did want to ask you to to relate one of your
famous stories this is concerning a problem you had a number of years ago
with with outgoing service on your telephone line if you could just give us
the details of that I think we've learned quite a bit from it okay I
believe I know what you're talking about it's a problem that I experienced and I
bet you there's a few other people out there that have experiences we've got to
go back to this wonderful computerized telephone exchange that I have and many
of you poor unfortunate people I know listening in Brooklyn they've got this
type of exchange I'm sure some of you deadbeat I mean some of you people have
forgotten to pay a bill and the phone company turned your service off and you
were not aware of this you picked up the phone place a phone call dial tone came
on the line any digit you dialed except for zero in my case would ring and give
you a recording telling you we're sorry your call cannot be completed as dialed
please check the number and dial again or ask your business office to help you
and so I hit zero and the operator came on the line says can I have the number
you're speaking from okay that's rather strange I told her my number and she
says can I help you and I said yes I can't place the call and I cannot dial
six one one for repair service I can't dial anything but the zero operator can
you call repair service for me no sir I'm sorry I can't do that well why can't
you she says well I tell you what we're experiencing problems let me call you
back and I gave her the number again and she didn't call me back uh-huh I've
called her again since there's only one operator she was she knew who I was and
kept getting the same operator yeah small town okay I called back got the
operator again and she wanted to know what my number was again and I told her
and I said listen can you why didn't you come in she says well we're having
problems I said I understand you're having problems why didn't you call me
back well your lines disconnected I said no it's not I'm calling you from
it I said will you just please call repair service for me no I'm sorry I
can't do that I said okay she says the equipment just won't let it go through
that's all there is to it my equipment will not let it go through for you and I
said well can you call somebody in repair service for me and have them
contact me no sir I can't do that either make a long story short after four or
five calls to this operator and trying going around and around in circles I had
to go down to the telephone office drive down there and say why is my phone not
working why is it I can get it I'll tell the operators hateful with me as I
recall as I recall the story you were red-faced with rage is that right yes I
was definitely enraged red-faced and the woman said calm down calm down now what's
the problem and I gave her the phone number and I said the operator was
hateful to me she would not call me back she would not pass the word along
to the repair service she wouldn't do anything and I gave the woman at the
desk number it turned out somebody with a number similar to mine didn't pay
their bill and they transposed the digit and turned my line off but while they
were back in the back checking a man brought in a telephone to be fixed I
said you might as well just throw it in the river as far as getting it repaired
is concerned these people don't care about customers they don't care about
service and every customer in the business office was staring at me I was
giving a lecture in the office but since then they have changed that problem they
have fixed it so the operator will place the call to repair service even if you've
been cut off well that's that's real sporting of them isn't it yes they will
allow one free call to the repair well it's not as if repair service cost
anything to call in the first place is it it's a that's right it's a free phone
call anyway so they were just kind of stupid it was a bureaucratic blunder I
guess uh-huh well we're certainly familiar with those here well regretfully
we filled up this hour really quickly and we're out of time what I'd like to
do is is have you come back in a future week and take some questions from our
listeners however if any of our listeners have questions that they'd
like to address to mr. French phone freak extraordinaire I guess is a good
way to describe you they can send those questions in to to me Emanuel Goldstein
here at the radio program off the hook and it's care of WBAI 505 8th Avenue New
York New York 10018 any final comments from you mr. French well you say you're
gonna have me back are you trying to lower your ratings or what well I'm
trying to increase the education of our listeners I think you know talking to
you is a way to learn quite a bit both about the history of the telephone
system and the way it works now and sometimes the way it doesn't work well
yes I would definitely like to come back and talk with the people and see what
their experiences are with the phone system and maybe even talk some
history I love to talk about historical phones and phone systems yeah well I
think a lot of people are interested in that I know there's people interested in
the old systems and you have a lot of knowledge and you have a lot of
equipment to how many telephones have you collected in over your years a
couple of hundred couple of hundred phones I'm sure there's people out there
that would love to talk shop with you so feel free to write to us maybe we can
connect people together I want to thank you very much for for joining us hey
maybe someday I'll even meet you in person who knows okay program is off the
hook we'll be back again next week next Wednesday night at 9 p.m. when I thank
everybody for listening stay tuned for the personal computer show coming up
next good night
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