Re: Old Party-Line Arrangements

This reminds me many years ago when a Bell 5XB with AMA about 60 miles
> from the accounting office sent the wide yellow tapes (no conversion > to punch cards) to the nearest accounting office by a package express > company. Once the box never arrived and apparently fell off the > truck. As in most such shipments, the carrier's liability was limited > to $50 unless a high value was declared and paid for.

If this was back in the 60s, $50 was equal to about $500 today.

I always wondered how much the AMA added to the cost of toll calls. The Bell System had to develop very complex tape punch machines to create the tapes and then machines to sort and read the tape--one machine resulted in a very large patent application. The Bell System was very slow to adopt mag tapes for this out of fear of unreliability.

What amazes me that outside of cities which used message unit meters for suburban calls, other places itemized literally nickel+dime toll charges. All that effort to charge 15c for a call.

Now that the system is all electronic and computerized, it's got to the point where we can get unlimited toll service. When I got that service, I thought of all that effort into developing, making, and running the toll charge equipment.