Here's something that fascinated me almost as much as insulators while I was in high school.... Telephones.

Very especially those that were other than the everyday household desk or wall sets we were familiar with in the 60s/70s. My high school (Weymouth, MA) had a console like you see here and I always was intrigued by its workings. I never got a "tour" of how it operated. Back in those days you were rather afraid to ask for things from your principal that might have been "out-of-the-box" questions. However, this never diluted my fascination for PBX (Private Branch Exchange) systems. Working with true-to-life Western Electric 1A2 vintage desk sets (as a hobbiest for many years), I now have my own little exchange (which reaches via open-wire to my back yard!).

My high school was built in 1962 and was equipped with a similar console but it was made by New England Sound. Instead of a console-mounted handest mounted on the left, a desk set was used. Otherwise everything else was pretty much the same including the AM-FM radio, PA mike and individual slide-switches for each extension (classroom). New England Sound provided intercom and PA equipment for a lot of other area schools here in the Boston area. However I've been totally unable to find any particulars about the company and their product line. Has anybody got any info them and/or the products they provided?

The operating system was manual. That is, calls from the classroom to office were simply accomplished by picking up the wall mounted handset from its cradle (having a switch within). You always knew when the office picked up the call (or just before the room was going to be called) by hearing a slight "click" from the wall-mounted PA speaker before the call initiated. The handset was mounted on the wall immediately below a foot-square in-mount wall speaker. "Ringing" from the console was done by a distinctive high-frequency (buzzing) sent to the called classroom. This was heard directly from the wall-mounted speaker. Despite dedicated and individual ringing circuits (apparently accomplished by using a slide-swittch on the console to the called room on the console and subsequently buzzed by a momentary push-button) I always found it interesting (without explanation) how a PA address system connected to all points could also use each wall-speaker as an individual annunciation "buzzer".

Thanks for listening about my fokelore about the other things that I thought were fascinating as a high school kid...and very often still think they are ;-)

Joe Maurath, Jr.

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