ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - Internet outages plagued several states Thursday including New Mexico.
Verizon and CenturyLink both reported service issues across the country, affecting several major cities.
NBC News reported that the FCC wants to investigate.
Would anyone know why this would be a nationwide outage? I would think 911 service would be a local function.
Back in 1966, the Bell System advertised about the high reliability of its network and usefulness in getting police help:
This NBC story includes an outage map, and noted in Boston, when a man's cell phone couldn't call 911, he used a still- working (copper and battery) street-side red alert box system (from 1852) that used Morse Code (!) to contact the Boston Fire Department:
Oh, good grief. I wish that NBC would take the time to verify the facts in its stories: Gamewell boxes don't send Morse Code unless there's a Fire Department Telegraph Operator standing there using a Morse Code key.
The internal mechanism that is engaged by pulling down the alarm hook sends a series of equal-length pulses that correspond to the number on the box. These boxes do NOT automagically send Morse Code.
The difference is important: claiming that a McCulloch Loop uses Morse Code implies that it has mechanical intelligence, i.e., the ability to send different message depending on internal settings and/or external events. Neither is correct: the mechanism can only signal to the dispatchers that /something/ has happened, not what it is or whether the ambulance, police, or fire departments should be sent.
Bill Horne Moderator
That is correct. In New York City the system has been partially upgraded to voice call boxes in the old Gamewell mounts, but the old boxes still in use in some boroughs send 4 digit numbers as equally spaced pulses, not as Morse code. The boxes are wind-up and work not too differently from wind-up music boxes. Originally the pulses rang a bell and the dispatchers had to count pulses, these days a computer counts the pulses and enters the number into the dispatch system.
Some boxes have/had telegraph keys inside so I assume at one time they did manually use Morse Code to call for additional assistance or otherwise report status to borough headquarters.
(this info may be a bit out of date, it has been 5 years since I worked on their system)
Non sequitur. Clockwork devices to send fixed messages in code (whether Morse or otherwise) have existed for many decades. (Indeed, broadcast translators historically used such devices to transmit a station ID by FSKing the carrier with the translator's call sign *in Morse code*. Nowadays it's all electronic, of course.) The encoding used to transmit the message says nothing about whether the transmitter was capable of transmitting other messages.
For what it's worth, several of my colleagues received a "Tone of Doom" emergency message *twice* at work today to inform them of this outage. I did not, but on my home phone, I received two emergency messages from my city's robocall system. (My home phone is a Comcast VoIP line now, but I ported the number from a Verizon landline when they decided to stop maintaining the copper infrastructure here. Pretty sure I never asked for the city emergency blasts, but at least one of today's messages was potentially useful, since we don't have a historic fire signal box system like Boston's.)
-GAWollman
In "Michael Moroney" writes: [snip]
Not Morse Code, per say, but a series of "ten codes". For example (made up here as I don't have the list at hand) an officer would tap in four times for a fire truck response, seven for an ambulance, etc.
Ah, that makes sense as to where the ten codes came from. The codes started as actual numbers keyed in from the alarm boxes. I never made the connection.
***** Moderator's Note *****The only "Ten" codes I know of were invented by the Chicago Police just after two-way radios were installed in patrol cars: they are spoken combinations of the word "ten" followed by a code digit. ("Ten-Four, for example, means "OK").
The transmitters used at that time depended on vacuum tubes, and vacuum tubes need much higher voltages to run than transistors. For that reason, the transmitters included a dynamotor to generate the voltage(s) required and dynamotor-driven transmitters were in use as late as 1972, when I took a job fixing two-way radios for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works.
Dynamotors, being motor-driven devices, need time to reach their proper operating speed: a little bit over a quarter of a second, but still enough of a delay to chop off the initial word or syllable spoken.
The "Ten" codes all start with the word "ten," which can be lost without losing the actual code number, so inexperienced operators might rush a "10-4" and the dispatcher would still hear "4."
Everything old is new, sooner or later: modern "trunked" systems have measurable delays after the "push to talk" button is depressed, but before the mobile radios are assigned a trunk frequency and are able to set up and transmit: again, enough to swallow the first syllable of a word, although usually not enough to turn "Don't Shoot" into "Shoot." Some departments still rely on ten codes, and some have started to use the Amateur radio "Q" signals instead, e.g., Miama-Dade County. Either way, the effect is the same.
I don't know if any of the "tap codes" used on landline systems were called "ten code", so more research is needed.
Bill Horne Moderator
Some observations:
. Many early communication systems had their own code for signaling that was specific to their operations. In railroads, passenger trains still use a trainline buzzer for the conductor to signal the engineer. For instance, two buzzes at a station stop indicate to proceed. The engineer has various codes for the whistle. We've all heard the grade crossing warning _ _ . _. There are various codes.
. When in school, there were various bell signals (actually it was a buzzer). Four buzzes meant indoor recess. A long and a short was a page for the principal, and a short and a long was a page for the custodian. Six buzzes was an air raid drill.
. In many buildings, each fire alarm pull box had a separate code assigned to it. There was often a chart next to it noting the location of each code. (Some systems, as at my last office building, didn't have that.) In elementary school, we were taught to know the fire code for the box closest to our classroom. In this way, if the fire was near us, we'd know to take special action. (This seemed like a good idea, but it was not used anywhere else I attended school nor worked.)
. In my old office building (1963), in addition to the fire pull boxes, there were fire sensors in the ceiling. They were connected to a vacuum line. High heat from a fire would cause air pressure to increase, and set off the fire alarm. They were tested regularly.
. I don't think the Bell System supplied fire alarm systems, except perhaps in its earliest days. However, the P-A-X systems provided by independent companies did provide a fire alarm option. Dialing a special code would sound the alarm.
. Philadelphia appears to have lost its street fire boxes long ago. In the 1970s they were still in use. When pulled, it would sound a very loud buzzer in the City Hall fire dispatcher's room in accordance with the code of the box. It would also sound in the firehouse that served that box. Citizens were instructed to stay at the fire box until the fire truck showed up to direct them to the specific location, but people didn't always do that. Also, there were a great many false alarms sent by pranksters. None the less, in the 1970s, most calls came in by firebox, not telephone.
. I don't know if Phila fire boxes could be opened to key in additional messages. However, that sounds like a very useful feature. Often times the arriving fire company would need to request more equipment or assistance. By the 1960s fire trucks had radios. I think by the 1950s, or maybe even much earlier, they had street telephone boxes for public safety personnel.
Western Electric did supply mobile radios for public safety.
***** Moderator's Note *****The code " _ _ . _. " is either "MEN" or "TTEN" in American Morse Code, which is what railroads and fire departments always used, so unless someone has a Rosetta Stone we can use, it will have to remain lost in the mists of time.
--... ...-- -.. . .-- ....- . .-- ....
Bill "Sorry, I couldn't resist" Horne Moderator
I believe that final "." is the end-of-sentence period, not part of the signal.
The "grade crossing" is shown as "= = o =" meaning "long long short long", or "--.-" (which as a single character is "Q" in International Morse, and as far as I can tell is an unassigned sequence in American/Railroad Morse) or "TTET" in either version of Morse.
I don't see any obvious correspondence between the meanings of the signals, and a straightforward mapping of the long/short blasts to dits and dahs in a single Morse Code character. There may, of course, be history behind it (as you suggest)... or they may just be fairly arbitrary choices.
I fear you have read the final period as being part of the signal. The grade crossing whistle is long long short long, all evenly spaced, as specified in the "General Code of Operating Rules". I've heard it all over the country. Some other whistle signals are:
- stopped, air brakes on
-- brakes released, proceeding ... backing up
-. approaching men or equipment near tracks .. proceeding past men or equipment, repeated ........ hey dummy, get off the track
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