LearnedAmateur
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Strange electronic setup
Yesterday, a couple of friends and I visited an abandoned asylum, St. Crispin’s hospital which closed in 1995, to explore and document with
pictures. We came across this building which we guessed to be some administration block for the officials/employees in the facility, separate from the
wings and other buildings. Amongst our finds, there was a couple of small rooms dedicated to electrical distribution, one with a circuit breaker board
and another with a rack dedicated to some sort of equipment array. Thing is, I have never come across anything remotely like it, and the closest thing
I can link it to is some sort of communications mainframe, since landline telephones would’ve been used to quickly communicate. Does anybody
recognise what these things are, and what their purpose was? It looks like technology from the mid-late century, not overly advanced but definitely
complex.
In chemistry, sometimes the solution is the problem.
It’s been a while, but I’m not dead! Updated 7/1/2020. Shout out to Aga, we got along well.
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RogueRose
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You got it. It's the old phone system or possibly an intercom system from room to room. It all would use the same wiring and fairly similar
distribution panels. Those things hanging by the wires (off the wall) are the patch panels where the individual phone lines are punched down. these
look pretty old, maybe 50's to 70's.
If you ever see a utility room at an office building or apartment building you will see something like this. What is neat is if you know what you are
doing, you can tap/connect to any phone in the place and they would never know (well, maybe).
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LearnedAmateur
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Ah right, it’s just hard to tell what’s what there because a lot has happened since it closed - completely ransacked if there was much anything
left to begin with, so there weren’t any telephones or anything that wasn’t physically attached, even then some of the switches and other fittings
were pulled out of the walls. That would make sense, on the other electronics board there are a bunch of zones and I’m thinking that the numbers on
the patch panels would correspond with those. Sounds about right, I think there would’ve been some sort of major redevelopment/upgrade plan after
WWII when it returned to use as an asylum having been temporarily converted to a standard hospital in order to treat soldiers during both wars.
In chemistry, sometimes the solution is the problem.
It’s been a while, but I’m not dead! Updated 7/1/2020. Shout out to Aga, we got along well.
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XeonTheMGPony
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you can see the automatic patch board with the large rotary switch on it in the lower right side of the picture and looks to be a relay bank far
right.
make your one personal exchange bank for the home! lol.
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LearnedAmateur
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To be honest I have no idea when it comes to this sort of stuff; sure, physics in general is pretty interesting but when it comes to electrical
engineering, I don’t even know where to start and can basically only hook stuff up to a battery haha
In chemistry, sometimes the solution is the problem.
It’s been a while, but I’m not dead! Updated 7/1/2020. Shout out to Aga, we got along well.
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aga
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the phone socket upper-right is a bit of a giveaway
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LearnedAmateur
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I wasn’t really sure what that was when I noticed it in the picture, I assume you’re referring to the white square, thought it was possibly some
sort of junction box since I’m not entirely up to scratch with the technology from that era and didn’t even know what the room was for in the
first place.
In chemistry, sometimes the solution is the problem.
It’s been a while, but I’m not dead! Updated 7/1/2020. Shout out to Aga, we got along well.
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wg48
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Here is what it would have looked like in working order.
The pic is for a large telephone exchange. The man is working on a similar DP bank.
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sodium_stearate
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That looks like it was the Main Distributing Frame (MDF)
for a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) at the hospital.
There were likely a few more aisles of equipment connected
to this frame. The purpose of the MDF is to terminate
all the cables installed in the building which serve all of
the telephones. Likewise, the MDF also serves to terminate
all of the available lines provided by the switching equipment.
The MDF serves as a means of connecting any available
line from the equipment to any cable pair in the building.
By running removable 2-conductor wire jumpers on the MDF,
each telephone in the building can be assigned to any available telephone number in the exchange.
If you had other pictures of other parts of this room, other clues
could be gotten as to what type of switching equipment
was being used.
Many of these systems also had an operator switchboard to
take calls during business days.
"Opportunity is missed by most people
because it is dressed in overalls and it
looks like work" T.A. Edison
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aga
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The hospital's PBX looks like pure POTS with one or more SBOs using plugs & sockets to route calls from ITCs to TPE.
Whilst googling can give loads of relevant BS, nothing beats remembering those (not so long past) days.
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sodium_stearate
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Quote: Originally posted by aga  | The hospital's PBX looks like pure POTS with one or more SBOs using plugs & sockets to route calls from ITCs to TPE.
Whilst googling can give loads of relevant BS, nothing beats remembering those (not so long past) days. |
Could it possibly be that this partially has something
to do with alcohol?
"Opportunity is missed by most people
because it is dressed in overalls and it
looks like work" T.A. Edison
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aga
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Only IPA was allowed in the PBX, for cleaning contacts. Worked quite well.
PBX = Private Branch Exchange
POTS = Plain Old Telephone System
SBO = Switch Board Operator
ITC = Incoming Trunk Call
TPE = Terminal Point Equipment
IPA = isopropyl alcohol
All real acronyms ....
Edit:
Funny how perfectly good buildings fall to bits when unmaintained/unprotected :
https://www.google.es/maps/place/52%C2%B014'34.8%22N+0%C2%B057'28.8%22W/@52.2430379,-0.9585011,125m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d52.243!4d-0.
958?hl=en
The URL thing doesn't work for this kind of URL anymore.
google.com those simple ones do.
[Edited on 10-3-2018 by aga]
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LearnedAmateur
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Actually there wasn’t anything else in the room, the place has been trashed/cleared/looted over the past 23 years so there might’ve been more
equipment at some stage but that was all that was left, apart from rubble and litter of course. These photos were taken in an adjacent room, I think
it may have been connected but this was literally the only other electrical setup we saw in the entire facility.
 
In chemistry, sometimes the solution is the problem.
It’s been a while, but I’m not dead! Updated 7/1/2020. Shout out to Aga, we got along well.
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