Western Electric Rotary Switch Board

[War Horse]

Our office bought a small Western Electric switch board awhile back.  Does anyone know information on this or maybe a website we could learn about it?  We're planning a good cleaning of it, but other than that there's no plans to make it functional.

[unbeldi]

Looks to be a WECo 555 private branch exchange made in the late 1950s or 1960s.
Yours has 10 cord circuits and seven central office trunk interfaces.

There is quite a lot of info available on these, including circuit diagrams.

From the front yours looks terrific, but I am wondering about completeness internally.  Could you post internal pics ?

Attached is an operator manual for the board. Perhaps that is a good start to understand the equipment.

[unbeldi]

Here is a more technical overview of the system.  This is the first issue Bell System Practice (BSP) of April 1952 for the 555.

[War Horse]

Thank you a ton for all the great info. It'll help a lot just to know what exactly we've got on our hands.

I'm on travel next week, but as soon as I get back to the office I'll take some pics of the interior. It seems to mostly be there. I know the counter weights are all there since it was heavy as hell to move.