From: Ross Herbert
Date: 1/9/2005 23:57 Central Standard Time
Message-id:

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 07:34:13 -0800, "Ron" no one @home.com wrote:

BOY! These 'How-To' websites certainly bring back memories. These are the
methods, procedures, & materials we used when I hired on with Western
Electric in the early 50s. In those days we used tons of #6 & #12 cord for
securing gazillions of feet of telephone cables inside the telephone company
switching central offices. We also got lots of blisters & calluses while
making the cabling look neat & secure. Cable mining? YUK!


Ron, with SxS every cable run was intricately planned and the
individual cables in a block had to occupy a pre-determined location
in the block so that the cables would fall out at both ends without
any cross-overs.

On my end as an avionics tech was rebuilding a harness without the benefit of a
block. What's more fun is when you get "help" from someone who thinks they know
what they are doing. In the 1970s I rewired the pilot's instrument panel of a
T-39. Each wire was cut to length, hot stamped with its number and soldered to
its firewall disconnect (there were 3). I set this aside and went home
expecting to finish it up when I returned. Imagine my surprise when there were
3 brand new connectors, a full set of wires cut to length and marked and no
sign of the work I had done. It seems a certain young sergeant decided to tidy
up my wiring by cutting all the wires to the same length.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired