I'm interested in getting some more detailed historical information on
> the way party-lines were arranged years ago.
> Can anybody elaborate and explain in more detail the arrangements
> which were commonly used, both in the Bell System and in the larger > independents?
> Thanks,
> Paul
Paul,
I once lived in an area (1955) in West Virginia where pairs were scarce. We were on a ten party line. Five ringers were tip-to-ground and five were ring-to-ground. They used coded ringing to alert the subscriber. (long-long, long-short, short-long, short short, etc.) To get rid of the annoying rings I built a decoder out of old pinball machine parts to screen the rings and connect my ringer only when my code rang.
I do not recall any correlation between telephone number and ring cadence.
Eventually we got a 4 party line. On this one they used two phones on each side of the line but used a small gas tube and a superimposed dc voltage to select the appropriate ringer. I don't remember the details.
George