Massachusetts State House

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.

[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!