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Ok you sparks what's this for?.....


Tony
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Yep, the old copper trunks. (Or copper coated aluminium probably)

 

When I first started jointing I remember being called out in the middle of the night in high winds and terrible rain as a tree had come down and the roots had taken one of these out, along with gas and electric. 

 

My hands were freezing as two of us had to put a temporary section in so effectively twice as many connections. If you look, you'll see many are the same colour and back then it wasn't digital so we had to put a tone on each line to check.

 

We couldn't cover because of the gas and electric. Every utility was there working around the Corpy cutting the rest of the tree up and taking down the one next to it.

 

From a H&S point of view all that wouldn't be allowed now of course. Everyone was working next morning though.

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Yep, every single one.

 

What makes it worse is if it's pulled up by tree root, the cables will be stretched and the breaking point will will somewhere further along underground and probably in several places so it meant more digging and took ages but people used to give us stick for it.

 

There's still a surprising amount out there. BT put proposals in 1985 to fibre the entire country (I was in my first proper job in Plessey working on SystemX for it) but the government stopped as they were negotiating contracts with the big international cable companies and thought it wouldn't be fair on them.

 

The public warning system still runs on copper so in the event of attack when electronic systems are taken out, good old fashioned analogue/mechanical devices are more likely to work. Look on the top of telegraph poles -  every now and again you'll see an odd shaped conical device. It's a siren and speaker. Usually on main roads rather than side streets.

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Nice of the government to let us know what the siren is for in advance BangHead.gif   I did see another image of the same sort of thing but the wires were wrapped in paper meaning you couldn't see the colour. 

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I used to have to joint with wax paper many moons ago. Horrible stuff.

 

There are voice coils that will give instructions.The siren is to make people stop and think then hopefully listen and will only be in short bursts. They test them quite often but very very quickly. Usually less than a second and send various tones down.

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Do you remember a company called Ionica in the 90s?

 

Yep, every single one.

 

What makes it worse is if it's pulled up by tree root, the cables will be stretched and the breaking point will will somewhere further along underground and probably in several places so it meant more digging and took ages but people used to give us stick for it.

 

There's still a surprising amount out there. BT put proposals in 1985 to fibre the entire country (I was in my first proper job in Plessey working on SystemX for it) but the government stopped as they were negotiating contracts with the big international cable companies and thought it wouldn't be fair on them.

 

The public warning system still runs on copper so in the event of attack when electronic systems are taken out, good old fashioned analogue/mechanical devices are more likely to work. Look on the top of telegraph poles -  every now and again you'll see an odd shaped conical device. It's a siren and speaker. Usually on main roads rather than side streets.

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Yes!

 

The system would have been brilliant if they hadn't limited themselves within the spectrum which was such a shame.

 

A few of the bigger companies adopted it partly and it could have knocked spots off BT and the others if they had just gone wideband. It was so advanced for it's time and would have revolutionised our data. I think BT bought them out in the end. Or more likely took over their assets and shelved them when they went into liquidation.

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