A lorge amount of progres was made ont he 1949 British Strowger switches and switching demo in the Telephone Museum of Prince Edward Island yesterday, and it should all be buttoned up on Saturday. John Mulrane, visiting from Ireland is working away on the switch, and adding the 1st selector (linefinder) controls and l/co relays, a tone generator and cadence generator, etc. and we are generally re-organizing the rack.
We wanted to get past the messy stage and get everything situated on the rack before we took photos - I did take one yesterday of John working on the rack, but the majority of the photos will come after today.... A lot of progress will take place today - everything is mounted now - we changed the rack layout around almost completely, but today will get most things up and running again. Tomorrow should finish it off.
The rack will have full metering, call counters, alarm, and if things go as planned using digit absorbtion, will take a 7 digit number. It is shaping up nicely, and great to have a gentleman who is as knowledgeable as John work on it! He does beautiful work! Sunday, we hope to have a couple of the Island Tel people down who originally worked on the switches down to meet John and for a BBQ. It will be the first time they have seen them working completely since 1988!
These switches were saved from The Summerside exchange when the switch was cut over to DMS in 1988 by Earl Pauley. The original exchange was PEI's first automatic office, and was installed in late 1949 and inaugurated in early 1950. It was 100% UK Strowger. The final selector (Connector) was one of the original 1949 switches, having survived 66 years! The only thing found wrong on that 66 year old switch, in addition to the normal cleaning, lubrication, and adjustment they all need after non-use for 30 years, is a copper oxide rectifier had gone bad, as they often do.
Incidentally, the reason that Summerside was chosen to receive PEI's first automatic switch, was that it supplied the very busy RCAF lines at CFB Summerside, and the exchange enabled better service to the base. It wasn't until 1952 that Charlottetown, the Island's capital city went automatic with a Northern Electric 5,100 line, 7,000 terminal automatic Strowger switching machine and a No.3 CL - 12 position toll switchboard.
