Automatic Electric Monotype 3x10 Cordless Board- It lives!

[Hill Haven Telephone Company]

Picked up this AE Monotype cordless board over the winter with some other stuff. Finally had time to get her going.    Gotta find a manual yet but its pretty cool 

[RDPipes]

Nice one sir, kinda wish I never sold off my small hotel drop cord switch board.

[jgeorge44]

Hello! Sorry to resurrect an old topic, but I've just come into an Automatic Electric Monotype 5x20 Switchboard and I've been doing a fair amount of research into how it wires up and how it works. I haven't found a manual for one yet, but the inside cover of mine has a generic wiring diagram that probably applies to yours as well.  I've done a little testing with this one and have figured out how to answer, transfer, and make outward dial calls for stations. If you're still here drop me a reply and I'll post everything I know!

I'll probably post everything I know here anyway when I have time to type it up, but if you still have this beauty I'll make time sooner rather than later to post it. :-)

Cheers,
Joe

[HarrySmith]

Hi Joe. Welcome to the forum. You have found the best site on the net. We love pictures so post away. We also love any and all info on everything telephone. Hill Haven is still on here. I do not know the status of his switchboard but I am sure he would appreciate any info you have.

[jgeorge44]

Hello! I had just got registered so I wanted to post something short last night for HHTC if they got notified of new posts. Now that I'm on the machine with the pics and all I'm happy to post more.

A dear friend of mine (and telephone restorer, I'd say "avid" but that doesn't even begin to describe him) came into a haul of switchboards last week and in helping him move them, he offered me one of my choice to tinker with. I'm mostly an old computer nerd, but old phone systems still appeal greatly to me.

One of the units is an Automatic Electric Monotype, with 5 trunks (4 installed) and 20 extensions. It was well cared for and well stored and it powered right up and we were able to receive and connect calls as well as make outbound calls with it.  Inside the top cover was a kind of generic wiring diagram for the Monotype switch, which helped me figure out what was what on the inside and how to operate the switch. For the moment I was only able to get a "scan" of the diagram from some cellphone pictures and reassemble them, so it's not perfect but it does at least show all the connections. When I can get a scanner closer to the warehouse we're working out of, I'll post a better one but for now, this attachment is the wiring of my Monotype and probably very close to Hill Haven's too.

The bottom left section is the various ways to connect an Operator Station, and the upper right are two different wirings for the Night Attendant whether the buyer is driven by AC or DC (same hardware, just different wiring). I was able to get the part number off the buzzer of mine to determine it was 24V and not 48V (a fair guess, but nice to be sure).

We hooked -24V to G/-MB (+ to G, - to -MB), hooked a butt set to T/R on the operator station, and a couple of phones to stations, and it lit up! We put dialtone to a couple of trunks a they lit up and we were able to route calls.

I'll post pics of mine in a different post. I tend to ramble on (it's my neurodivergent superpower) so I'll try to post info without attaching a novel. :-)

Cheers,

Joe

[jgeorge44]

Here's a photo dump of the switchboard I have, and a bunch of internal pics. I'll be adding to this album and organizing/labeling pics as I get more to upload.

https://imgur.com/a/lZBOv20

(EDIT: added 4 essential images from the imgur link showing the subject switchboard, what it is, for posterity)

[HarrySmith]

Pretty Cool!
Please do not use outside hosting with links. In a few years it will be dead and this topic will be useless. When you have a chance to get things organized please add them here. Thanks.

[jgeorge44]

Fair point - I used imgur because the full resolution pics were too big to upload here. These should all be small enough to pass.

[jgeorge44]

part 2

[jgeorge44]

part 3

[jgeorge44]

part 4

[jgeorge44]

part 5

[TelePlay]

I used imgur because the full resolution pics were too big to upload here.

We have a size restriction of 3Mb per image.

Also, have been asking that members to crop background out of images and then to resize them so that the largest side of the image is between 1,500 and 3,000 pixels. That image size shows excellent detail.

[jgeorge44]

Front panel switches and indicators

[poplar1]

A dear friend of mine (and telephone restorer, I'd say "avid" but that doesn't even begin to describe him) came into a haul of switchboards last week and in helping him move them, he offered me one of my choice to tinker with. I'm mostly an old computer nerd, but old phone systems still appeal greatly to me.

Do you think the "motel" paper indicates where this PBX was last in service? 

What other switchboards did he get? Are they all Automatic Electric?