Tom:

I'm confused about aerial drop wires. On your outside plant page http://www.privateline.com/OSP/No.html (internal link) you write: "Drop wires can be thirty feet long or thousands of feet in length. They contain several twisted pair, only the oldest drops containing a single twisted pair." The only kind I have ever seen is the single-pair parallel-conductor steel-core drop wire that has been on my house since at least 1975. Is it shielded? What does it use for a strength element? When was it first introduced?

Dear Reader:

Thanks for the e-mail. Cowboy Frank responds to your question:

"When I worked for Ma Bell, in 1973, our aerial drops were simple copper clad steel conductors with no twisting. The entire cable had a rubber (or plastic) and fabric insulation that was actually molded onto the conductors rather than having an outer jacket. (always made for a headache to remove the insulation without the proper tools) I think this is the type cable the person below is asking about. These (or something similar) are still quite common up on poles but I don't know if it still manufactured for new installations. The strength comes from the steel wire itself. I remember the same kind of drops as early as 1951 as the house I was born in (1952) had this type of drop. (even though it wasn't a Bell system company)"

"The only reason for twisting the pair is to prevent crosstalk between the pairs, so when there is only a single pair, they seldom go to the expense of twisting which would then necessitates the inclusion of an embedded "strand" (the heavy steel wire used to support cables). I don't recall having ever seen any Phone drop with an embedded strand, but I can understand the reason the person below would use a zip cord style description for his drop (it does look a bit like that but doesn't pull apart easily. Embedded strand is common for TV cable drops however."

"In 1973 they did have multi pair aerial drops used occasionally for multi family residences or small businesses. I seem to remember 6, 12 and 16 pair cables, but not sure about the 16 pair. It's been too long. At that time there was no included strand. If the cable was under about 50 feet, C&P phone company just used the general strength of the cable and it's outer jacket for support. If it was over 50 feet then they would sometimes run a standard single pair copper-clad steel drop and tie the multi pair to that. If the local supervisor was a stickler for neatness (as was frequently the case with Ma Bell) they would run a single conductor 10 gauge insulated steel wire, or a small gauge strand, and have the drop neatly twined (or what ever the correct term was which I can't remember) with the wrapped small wire used to tie big cables to the main strand. (I was actually never in that specific department so didn't learn the terminologies)"

"Shielding on overhead wires is not very common. Shielding is mainly used for either physical cable protection or to prevent wiretapping such as in the Pentagon. We use to see an occasional phone with an armored cord come in from the Pentagon. The cord looked somewhat like the new oven thermometers that are becoming common, but a bit thicker. Some underground drops are shielded mainly to protect them from rodents, and gardeners with shovels. I believe most of the newer underground drops are abandoning the shielding due to expense. I guess they figure it is cheaper to send our a repairman than to add the extra protection. Or maybe it turned out the cables got cut anyway. Been a long time since I was involved in that."

"In your e-mail you sked about a rubber covered box about 7 feet up the pole. Many times an installer would mount a connector block (splice joint) on the pole to simplify the installation of the drop. Especially if the drop was running down several poles before jumping across the street or to the house. It was easer to run the drop to that point and make a splice than to try to deal with a long drop and having to stop traffic while getting it across the street. I have seen some places where this appeared to be the standard practice for some reason. Every pole had several splice blocks on it. Really looked messy. This was more common on non-Ma Bell systems. Ma Bell was usually a stickler for neatness and didn't like such practices."

Visit Cowboy Franks' site soon:

http://nps-vip.net/ (external link)

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Hmm. PhoneTel http://phonetel.com/html/welcome.html (external link) says that the AnsaFone in 1960 became "the first commercially viable Telephone Answering Device offered for sale in the United States." The key phrase is for sale. The Bell System leased equipment to customers, it did not sell their products. Thus, while the AnsaFone may have been sold first, it was not the first answering machine. According to Amos Joel, the Bell System started work on "machine type service" in 1950, with trials in New York and Cleveland. Western Electric later produced for the Bell System the first true answering machine, the WE1A, using magnetic coated drums.

Read more about AT&T's equipment at this link: http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/autoanswer.html (external link).

The AnsaFone pictured below is from the Roseville Telephone Company telephone museum: http://www.rosevilletelephone.com/museum/ in Roseville, California. Click here or on photo to enlarge. Roseville always changes their URLS without telling anyone. I'm giving up linking to them.

The AnsaFone has U.S. Patent Number 3,376,390. Look up the 12 page patent document by going to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office: http://www.uspto.gov (external link)

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By TINA KELLEY, The New York Times, National Edition, Sunday, April 18, 1999

SILVERTON, Wash. -- At the turn of the last century, this mountain town had 300 residents, six hotels, five saloons, four general stores, a newspaper, its own band and a small local phone company. But as the "Bonanza Queen" and other mining claims became unprofitable, the town lost most of those amenities, including phones.

Now Silverton is year-round home to about 20 people, some defectors from the city, others who have lived in the area for decades. They enjoy waking up to the solace-giving trills of the varied thrush and the raucous trash talk of Steller's jays.

But they never wake up to the ringing of a telephone.

In a state where technology-based industries are responsible for more than a third of total employment, no one east of the bridge over Lake 22 Creek here on the Mountain Loop Highway can get a dial tone. Silverton residents with cellular phones have to drive 15 miles toward Seattle for the nearest signal. Satellite phones are prohibitively expensive.

There are parts of the highway tucked so deeply between the mountains that even the ambulances lose radio contact and cannot call for helicopters or other backup, said Vince Henry, a local fire commissioner and owner of Mountain View Inn, about 11 miles west of Silverton. The inn's pay phones, the closest ones to Silverton, are often too jammed with coins to work.

For the last seven decades, federal law has called for universal telephone service, even in places like Silverton, 65 miles northeast of Seattle, that do not fall in any company's area of responsibility. In past years, the nearest phone company would have been required to install lines out to Silverton and could have recouped the cost by raising service charges in urban areas that are cheaper to serve.

But since 1994, when phone companies in Washington were deregulated and their monopolies ended, GTE, the closest of the main phone companies that could serve Silverton, has had no incentive to lay phone lines to serve so few new customers. It would cost $750,000 for GTE to extend its land lines to Silverton, said a company spokeswoman, Melissa Barran, and residents there would be charged $19,000 per household to get phone service.

Fifty Silvertonians, including seasonal residents, met recently with a representative of the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission about their concerns, but no easy answer is in sight. This month, the state Legislature failed to pass a bill that would have established a fund to provide service to remote areas.

Bob Shirley, a telecommunications analyst with the commission, has been trying to find companies to serve Silverton, but in Washington's $3.67 billion telephone market, no company has the incentive.

"Those are a small number of folks, they're going to be very high-cost to serve, and they're not likely to spend all day talking to Australia," he said. He estimated that there were 300 households in the state that could not get phone service.

U.S. Cellular, a company that provides mobile cell phone service, had been interested in Silverton's business, until it recently found that providing service was not feasible, Shirley said. He plans to talk with several other wireless companies.

In emergencies, Silverton residents rely on a police radio, kept at Denny and Diane Boyd's house, to reach the sheriff's office. But if the couple is not home, or if the radio breaks or cannot get a signal, there is no way to get help short of driving to a ranger station near the inn.

Each year, mostly in the summer, 125,000 cars drive the Mountain Loop Highway, a federal scenic byway, to enjoy its many hiking trails and the fishing and camping along the Stillaguamish River. Too often, they need the sheriff's radio.

"If we're gone, everyone else is out of luck," Ms. Boyd said. The Boyds have had to answer their door at all hours, to cold, frightened or drunken strangers whose cars were not equipped for mountain roads. One group of bedraggled travelers ended up soaking their shirts in motor oil and using them as torches to find their way out of the woods.

"People don't realize how dark it gets here," Boyd said.

Norm Frampton, 44, who retired to Silverton from a pharmaceutical company in Seattle, paid cash for his house and now spends his days volunteering and working in his garden, says he pays about $200 a month making calls from pay phones and his cellular phone.

A few driveways west, Jeffrey and Diane I. Dukes were just getting back from Seattle. It was Tuesday, their day to check e-mail. The couple built themselves separate cabins on the Silverton hillside. ("She keeps hers at 80 degrees," Dukes explained. "I keep mine at 60.") At his old office, "my computer had its own telephone line," he said. He gets by without a phone now, but his wife misses one.

"That question keeps coming up, when you go to write a check," she said: She has to explain to shop clerks that she has no phone number to write down for them.

Dukes, dressed in plaid pajamas and a hooded green bathrobe, complained that he lost several thousand dollars when one of his stocks took a nose dive and he did not know about it.

Of course, being off the grid is a selling point for some people. One nearby house, advertised for sale as a "Self-Contained Y2K Retreat," offers propane appliances and both bathroom and outhouse, for $89,000.

But the current residents are not ready to give up their fight for phone service. "If Bill Gates wants everyone in the world to be online, Silverton should at least be able to call 911," Boyd said.

[Editor's note: I've included this Yahoo map to show where Silverton is. See how close the city, marked by the red star, is to Seattle. Just sixty-five miles away.]

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