If anyone is interested in telephone exchange technology at all, I highly recommend checking out the Connections Museum in Seattle. They have multiple eras of electromechanical switching equipment up and running, and a huge collection of cool old phones, teletypes and payphones. They also have a great YouTube channel with very knowledgeable people.

https://www.telcomhistory.org/ConnectionsSeattle.html

https://m.youtube.com/@ConnectionsMuseum

I feel like they're not well known and there's no place like it!

You can go and play with an old branch exchange, with all the whistles and er, bells at "This Museum is (not) Obsolete". Run by Sam from Look Mum No Computer. If you're ever near Ramsgate in the UK.

https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/

My dad was a telephone engineer/manager with GTE in the US. As a kid in the mid 1970s he used to take me with him to the local exchange building to deliver donuts to the guys on duty (he was that kind of boss). The security was interesting - there was a tube built into the masonry with a 90 degree angle that had a mirror. He would pick up the phone on the outside wall and say his name and an identifying number and then the door would buzz open. The building was a few stories tall and had no windows, which I think was a Cold War thing.

We would deliver the donuts to the break room which usually had at least one guy smoking in it (it was the '70s). A couple of times we went into the switching room which still had rotary dial switches clacking away as people dialed in numbers. There was an overwhelming smell of ozone in the room. It was all very cool to 5 year old me.

My dad worked at BT and used to take me to different exchanges at the weekend normally on Saturday mornings. I guess he claimed a day in lieu for working a couple of hours and then we went for lunch or pottered around the shops. In there were all sorts of interesting things. Piles of discarded electronics of various eras. Several computers and terminals for connecting to mainframe systems. I remember a Sinclair QL and Amstrad PCWs I think. He would let me play around with the terminals, no idea what OS was on there maybe VAX or VMS, use the printers and Microdrives. I was really interested in all that stuff as a kid but didn't really have anyone to learn from as my dad was more of a lineman, having started in the Royal Signals. Fun times!

This is an impressive feat of cataloguing!

Considering the telecom system is at the bedrock of almost all modern technologies, it really doesn't get enough love or attention in the public mind.

The dull derelict-looking, and often graffitied, buildings that house the system doesn't reflect just how cool the infrastructure is.

The Avoncroft museum of buildings in Bromsgrove, near Birmingham, UK, is worth a visit. They have a bunch of old telephone boxes all working and hooked up to an exchange they have on site. I spent like an hour talking to the guy in there about it all, pretty fascinating.

https://avoncroft.org.uk/avoncrofts-work/special-collections

Our old countries (and their tech) building on top of old.

Developing countries have less of a hassle with implementing something based on state of the art.

Lots of hassles with getting new phone lines, new power lines et al in the UK based on old agreements and a nationalised infrastructure. Please stop digging up roads and everything for arbitrary telecoms companies based on some deregulation, some collaboration please :-)

I visited an exchange back in 2009, when Local loop unbundling (LLU) on ADSL was big, and fibre was limited to large business and datacentres. The huge generator was probably more interesting than the racks of concentrators. I'm not sure how much battery back-up power time the new PON systems have, I assume less than a generator backed system.

In a similar vein, but for the US: https://www.co-buildings.com/ (And a shoutout to https://long-lines.com/)

My dad (who worked for BT in various positions) claims he was involved with the decision to move the exchange in our/their village from one end to the other. Coincidentally, closer to the end in which we lived, which I gather would have a non-trivial impact on our internet speed.

I think this probably coincides with the time period we got ISDN, very early, and I was amazed by the concept of _always connected_ internet. I can still vividly remember watching GoZilla download a game demo at 7kb/s, stunned and excited.

Although I never went into one of these buildings, in the early 80's I was a sub-contractor burying cable for SWB. I was always amazed at all the property they controlled. I had access to all their construction yards, which were spread out all over the city, some of them in the suburbs. Protecting these yards from theft was always a nightmare for them.

Interesting to see Kinghorn in the database (01592-89) because I toured the exchange as a child sometime in the late 1970s before it was brought into service (my Dad knew a bloke who worked for GEC). iirc it was a TXE4 system then, or at least of that generation. Building in a very poor state of repair now. Probably hasn't been painted since 1979!

Shout out to Milton Keynes Museum for their archive of handsets old and new as well as interactive examples of telephone exchanges:

https://miltonkeynesmuseum.org.uk/collections/view-our-colle...

Really, its own internet system before the internet. Massive load of calls. The routing has to be correct. I never understood it before working in telecom, but phones numbers are unique... for routing, like IP-addresses. And it could never go "down". In the 80s it was all digial too (Ericsson switches) and had to be real-time.

I used to live pretty much opposite the village exchange. It was just a very boring and nondescript little building, backed up by the picture on that website. I bet it was much more interesting inside though

I recall there was a voting system by BT circa 2002 to get your local exchange upgraded to "broadband" (i.e. not just 56k dialup) if it wasn't already.

and it's gone... 429 :D

Now, where are the STD jokes?

The site won't let me past the initial verification page in either Firefox or Vanadium.

Is their content really so sensitive that it must be "protected" to such a degree?