Automatic Electric Monotype 3x10 Cordless Board- It lives!

[jgeorge44]

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

Oh absolutely. This PBX was definitely used at some point by the Palomino Motel in Sanford NC. The phone number on the front of the PBX matches the phone number of the motel in the Sanford NC phone book from 1967. Two of the motel's Guest Registration cards were used as insulation to protect a couple of modifications to the PBX (that are being removed while I work on it).

I'll ask my friend if I can post about his find here. It's definitely his story to tell, and his thunder that I don't want to steal, and if I had to guess he's probably on here and has been for a long time, so I'll ask him if he wants to chime in.

The haul is mostly large corded boards. We don't even have them all yet, we filled the truck up with maybe half of it and have to go back and get the rest. There are only 4 smaller cordless boards, this AE, a nice looking Stromberg Carlson one, and two small five switch things that are obviously very home built and I dont know what they were intended to do yet.

[loblolly986]

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.

I've been wondering, is 3,000 pixels a hard rule? Because the compression level used when saving can control the file size independently of the pixel dimensions, if the program one is using allows this to be specified (I've long used IrfanView as my primary image viewer/basic processor on Windows). For example, I can compress an approx. 4.6 MB camera original JPEG of mine, 3872 x 2592, to about a quarter of that by specifying a JPEG quality of 75 when re-saving, with negligible quality degradation, while still retaining the full resolution if I can't crop the original enough to fit within 3,000 pixels.

[rdelius]

I wonder if these switchboards were saved by Wingate Branch a telephone collector that worked for Heins Telephone  in Sanford NC . He saved anything he could salvage from Heins Telephone. He had a basement full of switchboards and a garage full of more equiptment. He died about 15 years ago and most of the garage stuff went to the dump .chicago Old Telephone got some items but do not know where the nicer items went. I helped clean out things.

[jgeorge44]

These items were acquired from a Govdeals lot sold by a community college in Sanford NC. They were said to have been part of some museum display somewhere, but had been in storage for some time. All the equipment was originally part of Heins Telephone Company in Sanford.

[rdelius]

Heins telephone built a new office building in downtown sanford .After Heins sold out to Alltel,the building was donated ,poss to Central Carolina Comm Collage .CCCC used to have the NC school of Telephony as part of the collage .I learned XY switching, 3 slot paystations,1A1 andv1A2 keysystems and other usefull stuff. I have plenty of 120 Alltell paystation ins cards.

[TelePlay]

Difficult to use cropping to get an image under 3,000 pixels.

Cropping is first used to get rid of background not pertinent to the desired image.

After cropping, resizing will take an image down to 3,000 of not already so due to cropping.

Yes, larger images can be under 3MB by way of compression.

3,000 or less pixels is a highly recommended because it is easy to do for most members who are not image tech savvy, and provides good detail.

Some images are posted directly from a 12MP camera/phone and while having a 4K by 3K aspect ratio, are smaller than 3MB and attach without problems.

Long ago we set the software to a 3MB maximum file size to conserve server space and decided that a 3,000 by something smaller aspect ratio produced an image under 3MB with good resolution.

[jgeorge44]

Heins telephone built a new office building in downtown sanford .After Heins sold out to Alltel,the building was donated ,poss to Central Carolina Comm Collage .CCCC used to have the NC school of Telephony as part of the collage .I learned XY switching, 3 slot paystations,1A1 andv1A2 keysystems and other usefull stuff. I have plenty of 120 Alltell paystation ins cards.

It sounds like we need to stay in touch! These came from Central Carolina Community College, and one of the WE 555s looks like it was configured for a school project - there are lines for what are clearly teacher names, and we found a toll card made out for a call to a teacher's name in like Room 601 or something.

One of the side projects of getting this stuff is figuring out what it used to be and when it was in use, to get a sense of history. I've nailed down some of the PBXs to being owned by the Palomino Motel and what was Sanford Furniture, and one of the PBXs seems like it was used at another local school as their switchboard.

[rdelius]

The Palimino is still in business but not as nice as it once was . Sanford NC telephone directories and city directories aes at Lee county public library. Heins went dial in the 1950s with a SC XY switch.Used   302 (251) sets both NE and WE.

[Brown1d]

I am JGeorge's partner in crime on the phone hardware.  Also on TCI, CNet, THG and Phreaknet.

These are from the Wingate Branch collection.  So far we have 2 x WE 555 PBX, 1 x WE 551 PBX, SC Monotype, another SC cordless, 2 x test boards and lots of 302s.

There is still I think a B Board and parts of a 3CL long distance toll position. 

We have a long way to go, and Joe has done a lot of work on the Monotype.  Early signs are that most things work, they just need cleaning.

If anyone knows more history we would love to get more info.  We are figuring out information from old phone books and what paper was with the units.

[rdelius]

I was a good friend of Wingate Branch. Saved some of his wiring diagrams and other things. He was always helpfull and I still have some 3B speakerphones and other things.

[jgeorge44]

I was a good friend of Wingate Branch. Saved some of his wiring diagrams and other things. He was always helpfull and I still have some 3B speakerphones and other things.

We picked up two weird completely unmarked 5 position switchboards, that look like they were cabled together for... some purpose. they look like the might have been some kind of conference bridge or something, each one has 10 station lines and one trunk that feeds it through a repeater transformer. I'm in the process of working out wiring and repairing a bunch of broken wires on one. we put power to it the other day and it worked - in that it would light up when a station went off-hook and would connect stations together when switched - but beyond that I have no idea what it's actually supposed to *do*.

And brown1d has it backwards. This is his giant haul, I'm the partner in crime, heavy lifter as necessary, and OCD enough to enjoy working out wiring diagrams.