ALMON BROWN STROWGER
SINGLE DIGIT STROWGER EXCHANCE
My father spent a sizeable amount of years within the ITI complex adjusting Strowger exchange switches. This is the first automatic exchange system and an electromechanical device. Building telephone and their exchange systems in the past era was cumbersome because it involved various kinds of switching devices. My father was very good at switch adjustment so much so that he did lot of overtime.
The concept of Strowger exchanges has become obsolete but still admirable in many ways as it used stepper motors to achieve the activity of switching. There are single digit ten line exchanges to multi-digit exchanges and the optimum exchange had fifty lines.
It had two motor actions , the first one in the vertical way and the secondary in the rotary way. Suppose you dial the number 26 the motor went first two notches upwards and six steps in the rotary motion creating switching. A two digit switch could give fifty switching connections and multiple such switches could be arranged in a serial way to get larger number of telephone connections.
Considering that the number dialled in a complex exchange is 89765432 ..the first switch is 89..eight times vertical motion and nine times rotary motion which links to the secondary switch with 76..same way seven times vertical and six times rotary and so on and so forth until the final telephone connection is obtained. The same kind of concept is implemented in solid state exchanges of today.
Why I write about Strowger exchanges. They were invented by a swedish man Strowger who ultimately paved way for the large telecommunication networks and organizations of today spanning continents. Using modern day material and electromagnetic insights we must see if the Strowger concept can be erected and implemented successfully in certain specific situations and not abandon it totally. I still think it is a solid technological concept and device which can be re-developed on modern lines of manufacturing and thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_O5ZGLrbwA
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