UNUSUAL TELEPHONES AND RELATED APPARATUS

Telephone RP 3771

A plinth, for a 200 type telephone phone), equipped with two lights, a lever key and two large knobs. One is marked 1 through to 10, the other has OFF, DC and various frequencies marked on it.

This is a speaker telephone used in repeater stations, also known as the MATE (multi-access telephone equipment) used as a Special Faults telephone in repeater stations. RP and RPW diagrams were the Repeater Station equivalents of AT and ATW diagrams, the RPW giving tag numbers and wire routing information. [Paul Ebling]

Also used in New Zealand. It is used for switching a telephone (it used to mount on the top - see the four mounting holes) between different types of lines: regular "outside" phone lines (that you could dial on), order wires, "ringdown" (various standards of ringing for copper ccts or carrier ccts) ccts from other cable stations etc. There were numerous "stations" of these boxes about the old COMPAC Cable Station building so that you could answer, any call, anywhere in the building you happened to be - good when only one man was there for the midnight shift. [Michael Sheffield]

SYSTEMS FOR CIVIL AND NATIONAL DEFENCE

TELETALK
Graham Taylor writes: This is a loudspeaking telephone with no handset (i.e. hands-free mike operation), allowing turn-about speech transmission at the push of a switch (then predictably reverting to receive). The Royal Observer Corps always seemed to think that they were the only users of such devices, or that the unofficial name was their invention, but they are widely used in e.g. military and civil aviation ground installations (as is the unofficial name). The Corps' one one in the final days was a surreal blue-and-yellow BT sandwich toaster look-alike, with a fridge-switch to turn itself off when you closed the 'Finger Snapper' (officially called the AD8010).

WB1400
Air Attack Warning Network. It got the data via 'carriers' (usually 72kHz) from the CCPs to the warning receivers, both the loudspeaker type and the powered siren type. This replaced WB400.

 
WB1800
Handel Network. It took the warning from the ADOCs, via the duplicated speaking clock distribution networks (X and Y paths) to the CCPs. It replaced WB600.

Both of the WB systems are from the 'Cold War' era; for general information see the RSG website at http://www.subbrit.org.uk/ .

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