Month: October 2012

Pay to Call: Massachusetts State House

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These pictures are a mix from 2009 and an October 2010 visit to this landmark location.

These Bell System payphones are interesting.  These phone booths were used back when the Massachusetts Legislature used to be a volunteer form of governing. Back before the end of the 60s (or even later), there were only a handful of politicians that had corner offices of both the Senate and House of their General Court. So the other people that were the rank and file types, had to be mobile, and conduct their business in this micro cubicle called the phone booth.

   Early forms of “mobility” of a technology called the “phone booth” from the Phone Company

Since the modernization of technology, such as smartphones, notebook computers, tablet, the government has modernized too by having all politicians and lawmakers to have corner offices, have remote offices in their home districts,  and get full time employee benefits, such as probably having their own expensive digital set on their desktops, licenses to use additional features they don’t really need to use, and whole other things that the working stiff would wished to have on their desks! If they even have one

I did go to the Massachusetts State House in October of 2010. After spending a few minutes looking at one of my file shares, of my thousands of pictures, I did manage to get better pictures of the phone booths, as originally posted last night.

Telephone Directories – The New York State Government

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When I visit to local capital cities, I try to get the state government’s printed directories. I know New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont (used to) and maybe a few others in the area I can’t confirm…but I do know Massachusetts firmly doesn’t . I had purchased the New York City’s directory (known as the “Green Book”) online a few years ago, since I haven’t visited the city up until this past April.

an image of the government directory published by the NYS government.

The New York State government, however has gone through a massive transformation of government bureaucracy thanks to the leadership of Andrew Cuomo. I had visited Albany last year in April, and I was planning to get the directory then. However, the webpage where you find that information was taken down. This was around the same time they had a separate office for the Chief Information Officer and their Information Technology agency. These agencies merged by this point. I do remember briefly, if I went to the Corning Tower maybe on like the 34th Floor, I could see the operator and request the directory. I didn’t know how to get to that floor, only to go to the top and see Upstate New York.

With that said, I found this web page I was trying to look for that April, now they are located on the concourse in the Empire State Plaza (pretty interesting where they relocated this place.) However, I don’t have plans to visit the northern part of NY for a while, so I mailed a check about a week and a half ago, and I got this on Friday. It left Albany the afternoon before!

The book however contains all the departments, and all their employees that work for the state side of the government, as well as other contact information. It is a few years old, and given the economy, the Internet replacing hard copies, and the requirement for the government to be more efficient, it is still available as of this writing. It’s a neat directory for only about $3.00 if you ever happen to stop at the Empire State Plaza complex and buy it directly.

You can say whatever you want about big government or how inefficient it can be, but this was pretty awesome I got this within timely manner (even if I might be the only out of stater that request these thing on seldom occasions!)

Now I am waiting for the check to clear!

[Really] Private Systems: Massachusetts State House

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These sets of pictures were taken in 2009 at the Massachusetts State House. The government of Commonwealth of Massachusetts have been long time Avaya users dating back to the late 1980s.  If you are a native to that state, you should be proud that your tax dollars were at work from upgrading to the latest and greatest office telephones. However, as of these exposures, I would highly assume they are still use the 6400 series telephones.

An Avaya 6424 and a 6408 Digital telephone at the House Chambers of the Massachusetts State House.

I do not have any clue what is in the backend of the Boston area telephone network. Its a Definity based system but that’s all I know. I don’t know how many nodes, how many unique PBX systems that are located throughout the Boston area. Unlike the state that borders far west,  the Commonwealth is often tight lipped about telling anyone anything about the government. I do know Massachusetts has a headcount of maybe just north of 50,000 employees – yeah that’s a lot for a government sector.

A lady making a phone call on ether a 7405 or a 7434 terminal with a florescent screen adjunct in 1991. From YouTube user: MSTS1

Another unknown is how their dialing plan works. I remember going into one of the elevators was a 7 digit telephone number to reach the campus security. The  Commonwealth does not publish a government directory, nor do they have an online directory. Nor their western counterpart  publishes even a  guide to learn their telephones. They are very secretive in that state, and there is no such thing as public knowledge (don’t say its a security issue – that’s an excuse!)

Some pictures taken in 2010 when I visited there in October with some better quality of images of their super-private of private systems.

Another shot of the press office with very dated key telephones.

That’s all for now!

My Collection – AT&T (Avaya) 7102 Analog Voice Terminal

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Here is another private collection of another office telephone. It’s an AT&T (now Avaya) 7102 Analog telephone.

These were made by AT&T in the mid to late 80s, sports the “R” handset (Merlin style) while having a basic featureset with a 12 digit dial pad and a “Recall” (read: Flash) to use additional features of the PBX or “Call Waiting” as this terminal can – in fact – be used for residential landline services.

In fact, the ringer is much like the very old AT&T 1810 digital answering machine/house phone I had at my family’s house. It doesn’t have the sound of the digital telephones unfortunately.

I bought this on eBay a while back, and here is the gallery

It was made in Korea, kinda odd for phones to be made out of the States at that time. Maybe this was built in the same plant as the other consumer phones that AT&T continued to produce leading to the spinoff to Lucent in 1996.  I opened the phone and the guts looked like a cheap Asian produced device.

This phone however, is a shell of a BIS-10 (or a 7410 Plus), take the DESI paper off, and you’ll see the empty spots for those buttons. It was kinda surprising to see, but I guess since there was a membrane cover, it didn’t matter. I’ll post that picture (and redo the picture gallery in a neater workspace) at a later time.