Reminiscences of an Old Phone System

[Robert Kaplan]

I was reading the archives file of volume 9 a few minutes ago, when I
came across a posting from "Bruce Hamilton," describing the
difficulties he had been having in reaching "Deep Springs Toll Station
#2" near Bishop, Cal. I lived at Deep Springs for a year, and much
has changed. In 1987, the old toll-station wire line, which ran over
the White Mountains for some 50 miles from Bishop, was replaced at our
end by a UHF radio link, which used 462 and 467-MHz to send the audio
to a repeater in the Whites and then back down to Bishop.

When that was installed (by Deep Springs College, *NOT* by Contel),
the college finally had a phone number: (714)--later (619) 872-2000.
The audio was about as bad as it gets, and I imagine data would have
been impossible (although I am told someone once sent 300 baud over
it).

Those who were there before the cutover told me that for a year or
two, Contel allowed local dialing from Deep Springs to Bishop and Big
Pine, but LD still had to go through an operator. The wire line
stands to this day, as there are two people who live on another ranch
in the valley and still get phone service from Contel as "Deep Springs
#1." The poles have been taken down for the mile or so from their
ranch to the college, though.

When 872-2000 was connected, the college shelled out for a Panasonic
616. Before that, the intercom among the various ranch buildings
was a system that dated from the school's founding in 1917: big wooden
boxes on the walls with *cranks* and a mouthpiece on the box. To call
someone else, you would crank the appropriate series of dots and
dashes! :-) [The irony is, it was probably more reliable than the
'616, which would crash whenever there was a storm nearby.] Anyway, I
thought I'd share some details of a truly out-of-the-way phone system.

Scott Fybush
Disclaimer: This may not even be my own opinion.