I visited the Utah State University Eastern library on Friday afternoon to look for some newspaper articles about men who were killed in coal mine accidents in Carbon County. While searching the newspapers I found this article titled, "How smart is your telephone". I found it interesting since the new biggest craze in life is the "Smart phone".
The article goes on to show just how life has changed in the past 46 years. Yes, I have been alive for all those years. The article was copied from the Helper Journal, September 1968. As you read it think about your own personal "Smart Phone" or the one you wished you had.
How Smart is your telephone?
How smart does a phone have to be? Pretty smart if it's a coin telephone. According to Dick Young, Sales Manager for Mountain States Telephone Co., Utah has more that 2,600 public phones plus additional portable units which are set up for large crowds. He mentioned that the demand for public phones in Utah has steadily increased since 1963.
No phone is "vandal-proof" but Western Electric, manufacturing and supply unit of the Bell System, tries to make them rugged and accurate so the public gets the service it pays for.
The health and honesty of each new phone is checked before it goes into service. Like a healthy baby, the coin phone should make noises. It rings and, of course, reproduces voice sounds - it also should "beep" after being fed.
The beeps come from the phone's electronic accountant called a totalizer, and they signal whether nickels, dimes or quarters have been used. The totalizer is examined under a jeweler's magnifying glass for imperfections. If it passes scrutiny, Western Electric employees further test it by dropping coins through it while listening to its beeps with earphones. At the same time they check an oscilloscope to see that the duration of each beep meets a tolerance of a few thousandths of a second. All told, the totalizer gets 37 separate tests.
The totalizer is not the only extra in the coin phone. There is also the chute through which coins drop from the single slot at the top of the instrument. By electric and magnetic means, the chute separates coins of different value and rejects counterfeit coins.
Improvements are continually being made in coin telephone service. Young said. Western Electric is now putting a new model of the coin phone through testing. It has twelve buttons for TouchTone calling. The addition to ten numbers there are two buttons marked for use in the computerized world.
BEEP TESTER - Western Electric Kathryn Elliot feeds coins into a component for Bell System coin telephones and listens for
beeps and tests for the rejection for counterfeit money.
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