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Peter Amstein, a volunteer who is president of the Board of the Museum of Communications, says early telephone technology shaped his IT career.

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Peter Amstein, a volunteer who is president of the Board of the Museum of Communications, says early telephone technology shaped his IT career.

L Tremaine

As Peter Amstein weaves his way through a maze of equipment racks clad in wire and stuffed with whirring machines, he gives a hilarious warning.

“There are open electrical terminals here, maybe nothing will kill you,” he says. “But there are definitely some things that make you feel pretty uncomfortable, so be a little careful with what you touch.”

Amstein works in the Seattle tech industry, but in his spare time he is a lead volunteer, tour guide, and president of the board of the steering group. Links Museum.

It’s where self-proclaimed tech geeks like Amstein preserve and restore the machines that ran America’s first landline telephone network.

This is Willy Wonka’s factory of rattling gizmos, many of which were invented by weirdos and steam age craftsmen who managed to connect the whole world.

“This is the story of a high-tech start-up, only it is 120 years old,” says Amstein.

In an era before computers and plastic, America communicated through the technology of the steam age and network systems designed by master craftsmen.

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In an era before computers and plastic, America communicated through the technology of the steam age and network systems designed by master craftsmen.

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These days, Americans often communicate with other people through cars and computers, from text messages to dating apps and Zoom.

It’s easy to forget how we got here, how the telephone system shaped our first social network, and how its design still influences the way we speak today.

“So many things I’ve built my whole [tech] the career came from the telephone system, from the early developments,” says Amstein.

Voice over wire, the network that connects the world

A visitor at the Museum of Connections operates the switching system that first connected American telephone users.

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A visitor at the Museum of Connections operates the switching system that first connected American telephone users.

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Beginning in the 1870s, a group of inventors, including Alexander Graham Bell, figured out how to convert human voices into electrical signals and transmit them over wires.

Turns out that was the easy part. Once you understand how to help people communicate over long distances, you have to come up with a network that can connect the world of talkers.

The first step was human operators, usually women, who served as a kind of first software running the system.

“Should I gender stereotype you and ask you to be a telephone operator?” says Amstein, inviting the visitor to sit by the museum’s antique switchboard.

When she’s ready, he’ll teach her how to connect the cable one at a time. “Number please?” she asks, plugging in the cable and making the phone ring rapidly.

Public pay phones operated on a music call system that allowed operators to tell you if you had paid enough money to make a call.

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Public pay phones operated on a music call system that allowed operators to tell you if you had paid enough money to make a call.

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At first, the technology that allowed women to run the network was improvised from things the inventors found everywhere, often as simple as musical chimes or bells.

For example, in the first generation of payphones, female operators listened to musical notes produced by coins of various sizes when they were thrown into the slot.

“She could hear it,” Amstein says. “Microphone was here [in the phone box]and she could hear the bells ringing.”

Smart, but very slow. Not practical if you want to connect thousands and then hundreds of thousands of people.

Craftsmen find ways to automate a growing system

The inventors then began to come up with steam age machines that could also listen and make connections much faster.

Amstein demonstrates one of the earliest and most reliable devices known as the Strowger switch, invented in the late 1800s by an undertaker in Kansas City, Missouri. speaks.

The device comes to life, sounding like a drummer beating the beat on a cymbal. When Amstein dials a number on the rotary phone, the Strowger switch registers short bursts of sound, counts them, and establishes connections with amazing accuracy.

This restored version of the Strowger switch from the Connection Museum collection was made by the Western Electric Company. The device relied on pulses from rotary telephones to figure out which connections to make.

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This restored version of the Strowger switch from the Connection Museum collection was made by the Western Electric Company. The device relied on pulses from rotary telephones to figure out which connections to make.

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Circuit breaker designs became faster and more reliable, binding America for more than a century. Then, in the late 1990s, computers came along, and machines like that were thrown out almost overnight.

“It’s a beautiful car”

Amstein demonstrates one of the prizes of the museum collection – a panel switch system that fills entire corridors of equipment racks.

“This is the last switch of its kind, the only working panel switch on the planet,” he says.

Imagine giant looms with cables connecting telephone lines up and down.

They found this machine mothballed and abandoned in a telephone company warehouse. One of the volunteers, Sarah Autumn, spent months putting it back together.

Sarah Autumn, a Museum of Communications volunteer, helped restore the complex panel telephone system, the last of its kind in operation in the world. The work took her over a year.

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Sarah Autumn, a Museum of Communications volunteer, helped restore the complex panel telephone system, the last of its kind in operation in the world. The work took her over a year.

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“It wasn’t easy,” she says. “It took me about a year just to dig into it before I could even begin to understand it really deeply.”

Like Amstein, Autumn works in the technology industry in Seattle.

When asked why she spent hundreds of hours of her free time to bring this device back to life, she speaks of it not as a broken device, but as a work of art.

“I fell in love with it because it’s a beautiful car,” says Autumn. “The people who worked on these systems were highly skilled and well versed in this complex web of interconnections.”

People who work here say that many of these machines are woven with neat engineering, important ideas that have been almost lost.

The technology seems ancient. But in the rumble and rumble of these old machines, you can see part of how America got to where we are now – the age of smartphones, TikTok and AI.

Rotary telephones, invented by an undertaker in Kansas City, Missouri in the late 1800s, have been standard technology in the US for over a century.

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Rotary telephones, invented by an undertaker in Kansas City, Missouri in the late 1800s, have been standard technology in the US for over a century.

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The original HomePod arrived in 2018 and was retired in favor of the $99 HomePod Mini in 2021, but Apple brought it back earlier this year as a second-generation model with improved sound and new smart home tools. Now it’s on sale for the first time at B&H Photo Video for $279 in white another $289 in black through an instant discount, saving you $20 and $10 respectively.

The design of the second generation model is almost the same, except for details such as a slightly recessed touchpad, a detachable power cord and a slightly shorter profile. Inside, however, there are plenty of changes. Apple has reduced the number of tweeters from seven to five, tilting them slightly upward rather than sideways as before. The number of voice microphones has been reduced from six to four, and most importantly, Apple has replaced the iPhone 6’s A8 chip with a much more modern S7.

The new model fixes one of our biggest issues with the original HomePod, which is Siri’s limited capabilities. It can now recognize multiple users, create repeating home machines without an iPhone, and play music with voice commands through services like Deezer and Pandora, not just Apple Music. Most importantly, performance and responsiveness have improved significantly.

The sound quality is excellent, with superb clarity, although the bass can sometimes be a little too muffled for certain types of music. It works particularly well as a stereo pair, which is easy to set up via the app, can also be set up for use with Apple TV, and delivers particularly good voice clarity. The best part, however, is the reduced price compared to the previous model, and Discount B&H Photo Video under $20 makes it a particularly good buy – just remember to act before midnight ET on May 14th.

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