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We Celebrate Aerial Wire’s Third Century

Guest Contributor Mel Berns

Mel’s Memorable Open Wire Experience

By Mel Berns

For 40 years, I dismantled millions of lbs. of wire for railroads, Western Union, AT&T’s Long Lines Division, and the old Postal Telegraph Company as well as miles of bomb circuits all over the country. This included the Alaskan Railroad. I can’t count the number of poles I cut and pulled over the years, mostly bare green wire and the alloy of the old weather proof signal wire.

I’m 75 years of age now and haven’t climbed a pole in 30 years–the hardest and most fun job there ever was!

Mel on board train with open wire profile beside his own.

embedded1535485998530 embedded1535485545906 embedded1535485625530-1 embedded1535485865500 Feather River Canyon with open wire crossing on H-fixture.

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^{We are seeking interesting stories of those who worked with this amazing technology. Do you have photos of sleet-damaged structures, wide canyon or river crossing special structures, early construction or line wrecking photos? Did you work in the past for an independent telco, a Bell company, an REA-financed cooperative association or are employeed today in the telecommunications field?}

^{Contact us to share your experiences with this epoch of the telephone and communications industry.}

^{How did open wire as a pioneering effort improve later technologies? How did it lend a hand by making possible later developments in our present progressive and efficient state-of-the art communications systems of today?}

My Memories of

Open Wire

By Fred M. Cain

^{Archival photos by D. G. Schema}

^{My personal thanks to Fred M. Cain, who allowed permission to reprint his original article which appeared in the June 2006 TCI Singing Wires periodical, so visitors to our Song of the Open Wire guests might share his well-written narrative. I asked him earlier about how he came to share this information.}

^{"How did I come to write the article? Good question. I'm not sure I remember exactly anymore, but at one time, I fantasized about doing a book on the subject. But in the end I scaled that down to an article. I had a terrible time finding good photographs of open wire lines as I remember. The AT&T museum in Denver told me they had lots of pix but I'd have to travel to Denver to see them. That simply was not an option for me at the time. So, I tried to make due on what little I had. I hope someone writes a book someday. It seems like such a shame that a unique, although somewhat obscure piece of Americana should disappear and become forgotten. My Route 66 Project is actually not new. I had the website launched in 2003." Mr. Cain is associated with the "U. S. Route 66 Recommissioning Initiative [http://www.bringbackroute66.com/home/html].}

Part I: Personal Perspectives

What is it about open-wire telephone lines that I find so thoroughly fascinating? That's a good question I have sometimes asked myself. Open-wire telephone and telegraph lines were an important part of North America's telecom transmission system for almost 100 years. Open-wire telephone lines were also a once common, familiar sight in rural areas which has all but disappeared today. Consideration of these facts helped lead me to the opinion that open-wire telephone lines are worthy of study.

I can trace my interest in telephone lines back to my earliest childhood. Even as a small child, I seemed to have an early fascination with all things mechanical and things to do with electricity. Having such an interest led me to observe open-wire telephone lines didn't look like the other more common utility lines found in our suburban residential neighborhood; they were distinctly different. By the time I had come into the world, open-wire communication lines were found largely in the country. You didn't see them much in town.

Our family also traveled quite a bit, crossing the United States three times by the time I was thirteen. In the pre-Interstate Highway days, rural, multi-arm open-wire telephone lines could often be seen running alongside the older two-lane highways of that era. Sometimes there would even be an open-wire line pole planted right in the front yard of a roadside motel where we'd spent the night. Thus, I guess, my young mind came to associate open-wire lines with the joy and thrill of traveling, going someplace new and exciting and doing something different.

As I grew older, I began to notice that open-wire telephone lines were becoming increasingly uncommon. As a life-long advocate for the underdog, this only sharpened my interest in them. I seem to have many memories and images stored in my head. I have attempted to share some of my memories here with words and a few pictures I've been fortunate enough to find. I then tried to draw some conclusions on the plight of open wire.

I was born in 1952 on Long Island, New York, but before I was a year old we relocated to what was then a still largely rural part of Fairfield County, Connecticut. During those early years, I would often ride along with Mom to the store or on other errands. I can remember one day she took me for a ride and something along the road leading from our housing development caught my eye I hadn't noticed before. Something, you might say, that even struck me as rather beautiful in its own special, mundane way.

I saw a bunch of brand new, shiny, copper-colored wires held by sparkling glass objects glistening in the bright sunshine. Wow! There must have been twenty of them! I thought they were nice enough that I watched for them the next time Mom took me down that road. But they weren't there. It was like they hadn't been there until the day I first saw them but the next time we drove along that road--GONE! Did something like that really happen . . . or did my childhood memory play some kind of trick on me? Perhaps I had somehow confused two different locations or time periods.

A great source of wholesome, family entertainment during those years was the "ride in the country" in the family car on warm summer evenings. It stayed light late and didn't cost much as gas was probably around seventeen cents a gallon. Riding around in the country, I began to notice more wires where we lived. Along one rural road just off U. S. Route 7 in Wilton, CT, not far from where my older brother played little league baseball, I can remember seeing a large, multi-arm line possessing at least four crossarms and could well have had five or six. It started near Route 7 and ran westward along a rural byway back into the hills. I can remember being amazed and intrigued by all those wires and mystified as to where they went and what they did.

In the fall of 1958, we left Connecticut and moved out west to Tucson, Arizona. Bored and restless from being cooped up in the car for a week, I tried to amuse myself as best I could by looking at the roadside wires. I can remember driving somewhere in the South along a two-line highway that came to a rural stop sign. We stopped and turned right following the route we were on. Perhaps it was was U. S. Route 11? One amazing pole line followed this road. This was the first line I can remember seeing with mid-span transposition brackets suspended in the wires, but I had no idea what they were. I tried to ask Dad but he was too busy driving to look up and see them.

Arizona was a different world from New England, yet open-wire telephone lines were everywhere. There was a wide range from large, multi-arm toll lines down to lines that carried only a single pair of wires on short spindly poles back through the wilderness to reach some remote minding or ranching community. In fact, I would go so far to say that nearly everyone who was living well outside the city limits was either on an open-wire line or connected to one at some point.

During the four years we lived in Tucson, we made annual summer trips to California since much of Mom's family lived there. California had gobs of open-wire, even more so than Arizona since so much of California had a higher rural population than Arizona. There were many places in Southern California as well as the Central Valley that had much in common with the Midwest--except with no snow or ice. This circumstance favored the longevity of open wire there.

I can remember sitting on my grandfather's porch in the evening in San Diego listening to him tell his life's stories. As the sun sank to a certain low level, it cast long shadows and I could make out the silhouette of a distant two-arm line at the top of a hill on the opposite side of the valley. To this day, I can close my eyes and envision this scene.

In 1962, after another swinging through California, we moved back to New York, coast-to-coast on U. S. 40 this time. Back on Long Island, we resumed our evening rides in the summer. Occasionally, we'd drive up to our old stomping grounds in Connecticut. It was during this time that I first began to notice that the quaint, multi-arm lines were disappearing from the countryside.

We went back to my brother's old ball diamond in North Wilton and even drove down that lane off U. S. 7. The multi-arm line was gone! I can remember asking, "Dad, what happened to the telephone lines that used to run along this road?"

He replied, "They're still here," as he pointed up at several black telephone cables. "No, Dad, not those. I mean those other wires with all those arms and glass beads."

"'Beads?' I guess I'm not sure what you mean?" He couldn't recall the wires and probably hadn't noticed them in the first place. Later I showed Dad a photograph in the Encyclopedia Britannica [try looking up "telegraph" in the 1952 edition--you'll find it].

"See Dad, this is what I'm talking about--see the glass beads?" "Oh, yes," said Dad, "those are insulators." About all he could tell me about such wires was that they were old fashioned and that a as a child he once found a "green glass insulator" in his front yard in Port Huron that he treasured dearly.

Other than what sketchy facts I was able to glean from the encyclopedia, the only available method of obtaining information was by simply asking people. We had what I can only describe as a "grown-up kid" living in the house next to us on Long Island. He was a great deal older than me, probably in his late teens or early twenties but he still acted like a kid. In the lingo of later years, he could best be described as "rowdy," although the term was unknown to me at the time.

I will call him Larry Bletcher [not his real name]. Larry's family had a fireplace and a huge outdoor woodpile to go with it. After school one of my close buddies and I would often go over there and help Larry split wood. Larry would derive immense enjoyment out of entertaining us with his jokes and words of wisdom on the "real ways of women." To a pair of 13-yearolds, Larry was "beyond cool." To someone closer to his own age, though, he would no doubt be considered a bit of a jerk.

At any rate, during one wood chopping session, I began talking about my interest in telephone lines. Larry got a strange twinkle in his eyes and told me something like, "Freddy, I have to go up to our summer home in Vermont next week to fetch a new load of wood. I'm gonna' bring you back a little present."

"Oh yeah? Like what?" I responded. "You'll just have to wait and see. Remember what I told you, I will bring you back something."

A couple of weeks later, after I'd forgotten all about it, my school buddy and I were back over there chopping wood again when Larry approached me. "Here, Freddy, these are for you."

He handed me two beautiful, emerald green insulators. One had a round head and a good fat, tapered skirt on it with only one narrow, shallow wire groove. The other was very narrow with a pair of "lips" near the top to hold the wire.

I was absolutely ecstatic and yelled out, "Larry! Where in the world did you find these?" "In Vermont, near our summer home," was his brief response. I pressed on, "But where and how did you get them?" "I just got a adder and climbed a pole," he said matter-of-fact. I pushed further, "Did they still have wires on them? "Of course," he said in the same tone once again. "Then how did you manage to get them?" He simply responded, "Snip, snip."

My friend who was standing nearby listening to this exchange burst out into uncontrollable laughter. Did he really? Did Larry Bletcher really do that? After all these years, I have no answer for that. You had to know Larry. He might have just been having fun with me. But he could have just as easily been entirely serious as well. Who knows?

During this time, I made many forays on my bicycle from our house on Long Island in search of open-wire, sometimes riding for miles and going places I really wasn't supposed to go. I found some along the railroad tracks in a few places, but that's all. No active, public telephone lines.

My older brother Robin was attending the University of Connecticut during this period. I went up to visit him for a week one time and he gave me a tour of much of eastern Connecticut and west central Mass. I was fortunate enough to see a few rural open-wire leads still in service there.

My Dad had a friend in our church whose name escapes me, so we'll just call him "Mr. Hearst." Dad and I had lunch with him one day. During the lunch conversation, he mentioned that he worked for New York Telephone. I proceeded to barrage him with a slew of questions. He old me that until very recently, the Company had a lot of open wire out on the eastern portions of the Island but he thought that it had all been taken down. "But, if you look hard enough, you might find a pair or two here and there that we missed," I can remember him saying.

I asked him why they took it all down? He basically blamed the weather. "It works great until you get an ice storm or a snow storm with wet, heavy, sticky snow. First it sags under the weight . . . and then--boom! It's down!"

One day I was outside playing or something when Dad came home and yelled at me, "Freddy! Come over here, I've got something for you!" I walked over to the car and he proceeded to hand me a rather large grocery bag.

"Watch out! Be sure you put your hand on the bottom. It's heavy. Mr. Hearst asked me to give these to you." Heavy indeed! It's all I could do to manhandle it to the ground without dropping it. When I opened the bag and peered inside, my eyes just about popped out of my head! It was filled with clear glass insulators. They were all the same with a flat top and straight sides with two wire grooves if I remember right. I used them to build a very crude, primitive, but entirely functional telephone line on our property. Later, I asked Hearst why they had two grooves but just gave me a blank stare. "I guess because that's the way they were made." Later I realized they were in fact used on a particular type of two-insulator transposition bracket.

During the summer of 1965, I learned we would be returning to Arizona once again. The trip back took us down much of Old U. S. Route 66, an experience that left me with many fond memories and helped galvanize a life-long interest in our most historic route designation. As had been the case on a lot of other family trips we took together, I also saw a good number of open-wire lines, many of them in their declining days.

Life in Arizona in the 1960's was great for a budding open-wire enthusiast. Not only were there still gobs of it in use but it also remained a very active part of Arizona's expanding telephone system at the time.

One day, I decided to go on an "open-wire search" with my bicycle--probably one of the very few times in my life that I had the good sense to bring my trusty "Brownie" camera along. I shot a number of open-wire lines that I found in different older housing developments. A few of them were right in people's backyards. Presumably these were all once rural areas where the city had simply grown up around them but the wires remained.

I shot one neat looking one-arm line up in the vicinity of Swan Road and Grant, although I cannot recall its exact location. It wasn't really a very long line, but it did have 16 pins on it! After I left the scene, I passed a telephone man just around the corner who had stopped his van and was doing something in a cable junction box. I unsuspectingly approached him and tried to peer over his shoulder to see what he was doing. To my mind it looked as if he was struggling with a million nerve endings.

He turned to me and seeing my camera exclaimed, "Hey kid! Whose picture ya' gonna' take?" "Well, actually, I brought it to take a picture of the telephone wires." "Oh yeah? What wires you talkin' about?" "Right back there. There's some really neat-lookin' open wires, you know the ones I mean?" He just snarled back at me, "Oh, yeah, I know. Those are comin' outta there one of those days."

I was a bit taken back by what I perceived as his negative attitude. Why? How dare him say such a thing about those beautiful . . . some thoughts passed through my head. I wanted to ask him what could be done to save them. But then, I realized I couldn't provide a truly compelling reason to save them right off the top of my head other than the fact that I just wanted them to . . . remain. I thanked him for his time and bid him good day.

At this time in the '60's, there were also several toll lines that connected Tucson to the neighboring cities and towns. Of particular fascination to me was what I liked to call the "monster toll." This was a five-arm lead that ran along the Southern Pacific Railroad from Tucson west all the way to Riverside, California and eastward through the desert on its own right-of-way to El Paso, Texas. One segment of the line ran right through town alongside busy 22nd Street--a major Tucson thoroughfare--evoking visions of a scene straight out of the 1890s.

Our second stay in Tucson didn't last very long. Dad was offered a much more attractive engineering position at another firm so in the fall of 1967, we moved to Scottsdale in the Phoenix area.

The Phoenix area back in 1967 was much larger than Tucson even at that time. However, like Tucson, there were still some open-wire lines to be found in older residential areas. There were also open-wire lines, too numerous to mention, out in the Carefree and Cave Creek areas as well as over by Lake Pleasant. Many of them were still new in 1967. Most, however, were only five pairs or less. These areas were still sparsely settled at that time with only a smattering of ranch homes here and there. Many of these subscribers were hooked up to the phone system with open-wire.

Like Tucson, Phoenix also had several toll lines that connected to nearby cities and towns. Of particular interest to me was a fascinating line that connected to the "monster toll line" in at what was at the time only the tiny little town of Maricopa south of Tempe. It ran northward along the Maricopa Road ending on the south side of Tempe where it entered a lead-sheathed cable. I distinctly remember the line carrying four arms during its last years in operation.

On at least one occasion, we drove to Casa Grande "the back way" by going down the Maricoipa Road. The line ran right alongside the very edge of the road. It was quite a spectacle, all those wires and all that glass sparkling in the desert sun. You almost felt like you were driving right in the wires!

After graduating from high school, I headed back down to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona in the early 1970s. I explored on my sparer time. On one trip, a friend from my dorm, Barry Roberts and I, started out on our bicycles and rode east out of town along the Vail Road. This area was still largely undeveloped at that time. Somewhere along there we came to a spot where the "moster toll line" crossed the road on its own right-ow-way headed toard Vail and Benson. By this time, it had been cut from five arms to four.

"Hey, look at this!" I exclaimed to Barry. Barry was no open-wire enthusiast but none the less he couldn't help be impressed by all those wires and all that glass. He had his camera with him and took several pictures of it for me. He promised to make certain that I got the pictures. But as time passed, I lost touch with Barry and never did get the photos. That just seems to be the way my luck has gone.

My college career was difficult for me. I dropped out of school and went back several times. After several false starts, I finally graduated from Arizona State University in Tempe with a Bachelor's Degree in music therapy in 1980. I then returned to the northeastern United States. By this time, Mom and Dad had relocated to the San Francisco Bay area.

In the summer of 1981, I went out to visit Mom and Dad. The three of us took a road trip through Northern California to see the Redwoods and other sights. Much to my surprise and delight, I still saw lots of open-wire there even at this relatively late date. On the flight back to New York, I had the good fortune to sit next to an older gentleman who was retired from the Southern New England Telephone Company. I began asking him questions about what he did with the intent of eventually bringing the conversation around to open-wire.

"Do you know if there is any open-wire left in Southern New England?" "Well, there might be pair or two here or there on private property--but essentially, no." We took all that stuff down years ago." I told him that I'd seen some around the University of Connecticut area in 1965, while visiting my older brother when he was in school there.

"Well, yes, back at that time there was still some there but that's been gone for sometime now," he replied.

I asked him about the large four or five arm line that I thought I'd seen the Wilton, Connecticut area in the 1950s when I was but a small child. I asked him if he knew what it was for or where it went?

"Well, I'm afraid I cannot recall a specific line like that at that particular location. But I can tell you that at that time we still had some lines like that, yes. But I don't remember tone in the Wilton area, I'm afraid. Could well have been, though."

When I asked him about the thing that had puzzled me for so many years. How as a small child I'd thought I'd seen a new shiny two-arm line while out with my Mom one day that I hadn't noticed before but later it was gone again. Had I really seen that or was my childhood memory playing tricks on me?

"Oh yes, that," he began with a slight chuckle. "I think I can explain that. You see, after the Second World War, there was a lot of new development in that part of Connecticut and we had a lot of new subscribers. Much of the area in those days was still quite rural. At that time, especially if ten or fewer subscribers were involved, it was our usual practice to hook them up to the nearest major cable line with open-wire. Then one day the decision was handed down from upper management to phase out the use of open-wire and we just took them all down again. Many lines had only been in service for a few years. There were quite possibly a few lines like the one you saw that had only been in service a few months. But we were told to phase it out so that's what we did."

I thought to myself, how incredibly bizarre! This whole explanation made me think of the kind of story I would've expected to come out of the old Soviet Union, but of course, I didn't tell him that. No matter. A small mystery that had piqued my curiosity for nearly 25 years was solved. In all probability, I had very likely seen exactly what I thought I'd seen as a four-year old child in the mid-1950's. That being the case, I began to wonder if my memory of the large multi-armed line in the Wilton area might also be accurate. It's just that throughout much of my adult life I was unable to pinpoint the exact location of the line for a long time.

Pouring over a DeLarme Gazetteer for Connecticut while fishing for memory fragments from the very depths of my brain from my very earliest childhood, I honed in on the Olmstead Hill Road area of North Wilton, CT. It seemed local that this place might fit my memory but how in the world could I ever know? This was such a long, long time ago. Enter the curator at the Wilton Historical Society.

I contacted her and explained my dilemma. She did some research in her archives and was not only able to locate a photo of the line, but two photos! I now have verification that the line really did exist and I didn't just dream this. Of course, it is still a puzzle to me as to what the line was for and where it went. Unless and until someone comes forward who remembers, I guess that will just have to remain an unknown. Perhaps some mysteries in life are just not meant to be solved.

I did not remain content doing music therapy in the Northeast for very long. In 1985, after five years of that, I changed careers and relocated to northeastern Indiana where I have pursued a 20-year vocation in the RV parts business. No open-wire here. Trust me. When I first moved to the area, there was still an occasional pair leading to a farm house or two, but even that's gone now.

With this we can conclude by reflecting back over the fact that the multi-arm, open-wire telephone line was once such a common and inseperable part of rural America has for all intensive purposes completely disappeared from the Nation's countryside. As of this writing (2006), it is perhaps still possible to find a few isolated one-arm lines in remote areas of the far West. But even if that is so, they are almost certainly living on borrowed time while the larger, multi-arm lines of yesteryear are long gone.

Wire antagonists may rejoice and bid good riddance to what they regarded merely as an ugly "eyesore" that only cast a blemish on the countryside. But I thin it's rather sad, really. I don't feel like they were ugly but instead, blended in well with the surrounding countryside and actually added something to it. In essence, they were a part of what we were.

This point is driven home in George R. Stewart's classic book, U. S. 40: A Cross Section of the United States of America, published by Houghton Mifflin, 1953. Although he might not have realized it at the time (or perhaps Stewart had an inkling), the author captured in words and photographs the very essence of cross-country motoring in the last years before the Interstate Highway System would forever change the way we travel.

Stewart's masterful photography also captured in black and white, some of the finest photographs I have found to date of rural, open-wire telephone lines. Professional photographers have historical gone to great lengths to make sure they cut wires out of their images. Not Stewart. He clearly saw what others couldn't see. The wires were part and parcel of his subject and not just merely something to get in the way to spoil it.

Using Stewart's own words from his forward titled, "As for this Book," he said, "A friend looked at one of the photographs and remarked, 'Very good! But it's too bad those wires came in where they did.' He was obviously speaking as one of the aesthetic school. I explained to him that far from trying to avoid the wires, I had maneuvered myself into a position where the wires were emphasized," Bravo! Professor Stewart, for a job well done!

Thomas and Geraldine Vale wrote a re-make of sorts of the Stewart classic volume in 1983, titled: U. S. 40: Thirty Years of Landscape Change, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1983. In their respective volume, the Vales would reprint Stewart's 1953 photo with their own underneath of the same location; hence a "before and after effect" was achieved.

In one great scene titled "Plains Border," Stewart had shown a two-lane, Portland concrete U. S. 40 section near the Smokey Hills section of Kansas. A beautiful, classic, four-arm toll line dominates this photo. Needless to say, the pole line had passed on by the time the Vales reconnected with the original Stewart scene. Furthermore, old U. S. 40 had been by-passed by new I-70.

As Vale puts it, "The decrease in the status of the roadway, which is now a Kansas (K-140) State Highway, would not explain the loss of the 'magnificent pole-line,' as Stewart described it, but the line's replacement, undoubtedly by underground cables, adds further to the feeling of isolation of the scene." Vale's succinct words pretty well sum up my own feelings. While it is difficult to deny the fact that new underground cables have almost certainly brought telephone users better service, none-the-less an unfortunate loss has occurred. Something that was once felt like an inseparable part of our landscape seems to be missing which, to those who remember open-wire lines, gives the countryside an increased feeling of "isolation."

Today, it is still possible to depart the Interstate and reconnoiter old U. S. 40 or U. S. 66 or a myriad of other older highways and by-ways. Once you're away from the hustle and bustle of the city and suburbs, you can still view a landscape that is not too much different from the one Stewart knew. Many of the pastoral settings are still there. Many of the tidy, rural farmsteads are still there. The breathtaking western scenery is certainly still there. But the quaint, rural telephone lines that added their own colorful charm to these scenes are gone.

What is beyond sad--in fact, down right tragic--is that this could all happen with nary a word. There was no write up in TIME, LIFE or Newsweek magazines of their passing. There was no "three-minute" On the Road ditty shown as a tribute by Charles Kuralt on the CBS Evening News. No . . . the lines just quietly departed the landscape, that's all. This is a most unfortunate set of circumstances that needs to be set right. Perhaps . . . there is still time to do that.

Part II: The Causes of Demise

It is most certainly justified to ponder over the question as to what caused the demise of the rural open-wire telephone line. How in the world could something once so commonplace, so utterly and completely disappear from the landscape during the course of one man's short lifespan? It would be tempting to simply dismiss open-wire as an old-fashioned "has been," which was nothing more than an obsolete, older technology. However, the true reason for the demise of open-wire is more complicated and subtle than that. The fact is, the cause of open-wire's demise had as much to do with simple, old-fashioned economic principles as with changes in technology.

To address this question, we need to first take a look at what made open-wire popular in the first place. Prior to around 1940 or 1950, there were two primary factors making open wire highly economical in rural areas. First of all, the lead-sheathed cables in vogue during the open wire era were costly to manufacture and to maintain. They had a superior advantage over open-wire in they could contain hundreds of individual circuits. This fact made the lead-sheathed cable both practical and a down right necessity in large urban areas.

But, the fact remained in rural areas where perhaps 30 or fewer pairs were required, open-wire was cheaper to maintain than lead-sheathed cable. A second factor in the economics of open-wire was by the very nature of its larger diameter wire, it could transmit a signal much farther than the very fine, thread-sized wires of a cable before amplification became necessary. Early amplifiers with their hand-soldered circuits and vacuum tubes were also quite salty to acquire and were maintenance intensive. Both of these factors made open-wire economically attractive in areas where less than 25 or 30 pairs were required and the signals had to be transmitted over considerable distances.

The development of cheap, polyethylene-sheathed cable along with the printed circuit board and transistors, caused open-wire to completely lose the two primary economic advantages that it had possessed over cables. Polyethylene cable had an additional advantage in that it could be buried directly in a trench without requiring expensive conduits. This allowed telephone companies to dispense with wooden poles completely in some instances.

Two smaller factors contributing to the end of open-wire counted the decline of the rural party line and the complete demise of the magneto telephone. Fifty years ago, many rural lines had as many as eight parties on a line. A two-arm, ten-pair open-wire line with eight parties per circuit could therefore service up to eighty subscribers. In many sparsely populated areas, 80 subscribers might be spread over a considerable distance. That, in turn, caused the two economic advantages discussed previously to perpetuate the use of open-wire. In our modern "at-your-fingertips" world, the party line has largely disappeared as most people desire and expect privacy.

The older technology employed in magneto telephones was also a lot more forgiving of the transmission interference problems found on open-wire lines such as wet, clinging snow which accumulated around insulators, or wet tree branches hanging in the wires. When rural telephone companies wet to direct dialing, they soon discovered that open-wire lines had to be strictly maintained to the very highest levels or the results were mis-rings and ringing failures. This merely provided yet another incentive for rural telephone companies to do away with open-wire. All of these developments took place during a time when labor costs were generally rising along with the cost of materials required to build and maintain open-wire. Open-wire quite simply--priced itself out of existence.

One might be quick to assume the development of modern fiber optics cable played a major role in the demise of open-wire. But in reality, fiber optics had little or now impact because by the time fiber optics became economically feasible, most open-wire telephone lines were already gone.

Revival?

To the die-hard, open-wire enthusiast or insulator collector, it's fun to contemplate the notion as to whether or not open-wire telephone lines could perhaps one day stage a comeback. While such a possibility seems extremely unlikely at best, neither can it be entirely dismissed as completely impossible.

Polyethyline is derived from petrochemicals. Petroleum is anon-renewable natural resource. Once it's gone--it's gone. Anyone forced to pay today's prices at the gas pump is all too aware of this fact. If costs rise too far, such materials could be uneconomical again. On the other hand, the wood used in poles and crossarms is a renewable natural resource. Glass insulators are made from silica sand. Hardly a chance of ever running out of sand and glass can be recycled anyway. That only leaves the wires. But, perhaps new materials could also be developed to make new wires with, possibly through the use of nanotechnology. Could changing economics once again tip the balance back to favor open-wire? The plain and simple fact of the matter is yes . . . it could.

Rising technology, while contributing to the demise of open-wire, can also work to its benefit. It is probably an ironic fact that advancing technology during the 1930's and'40's and '50's, almost certainly extended the lifetime of many open-wire lines. New kinds of carrier systems allowed a huge increase in the capacity of existing open-wire lines without actually requiring the addition of any new wires. But, as open-wire cost rose and cable costs fell, in the end, even those advanced technologies were unable to save open-wire lines.

A 1952 AT&T Bell Labs' advertisement touting newly developed "O-Carrier," which appeared in many periodicals of the period, exemplified the extended working lives of many existing older long distance open-wire toll lines.

Taken to a much higher level, especially if rising cable costs become a major issue, new, highly advanced technologies could play a role in a comeback. Some modern digital mixers, for example, can allow as many as 192 simultaneous messages, including Internet, to be transmitted over a mere eight pairs of wires. Could open-wire be employed in such a technology? I believe such a possibility should at least be considered and researched by modern telecom companies--if for no other reason than open-wire is yet quite common in much of the developing world.

It is clear there are huge obstacles to such a revival in America. For one thing, the manufacture of parts needed in ope-wire lines--everything from glass insulators, pin, arms and transposition brackets ceased long ago. More importantly, the tooling necessary to make those items is probably gone. Another regrettable loss is the American "know how" of stringing and maintaining open-wire lines is probably no longer available.

There is, however, another way that open-wire might make a comeback. That could happen if open-wire enthusiasts and insulator collectors simply take things into their own hands and build their own lines. The increased interest of recent years on the part of insulator collectors and open-wire enthusiasts has give rise to what I like to call the "backyard telephone line." A backyard line can be an excellent way to illustrate how older open-wire lines appeared and display an insulator collection at the same time. Across the land, a number of talented individuals have crafted such lines.

One final thought on the subject of open-wire might be to plan some kind of a large, indoor/outdoor telephone museum. There are already a number of excellent telephone museums around the country. However, with real estate at a premium, it is difficult for most of these museums to adequately display and represent outdoor plant and equipment.

It would be nice if we might envision a telephone museum that could be located on around one hundred to three hundred acres or so in a rural setting situated conveniently near a major state or Interstate highway. Perhaps such a museum could combine forces with a railroad museum accessing expansive acreage. Such facilities would represent typical facilities--some designed to be functional as well.

I believe the memory of these quaint, historic and once important lines should be preserved for future generations. Open-wire enthusiasts and insulator collectors have a unique advantage to help make this happen due to their vast knowledge, their enthusiasm for the subject, not to mention their extensive collections of insulators. The help and hard work from collectors will be necessary to keep the memory of our Nation's open-wire telephone facilities alive. Wouldn't it be wonderful for future generations to be able to say of open-wire telephone lines: "Gone but not forgotten."

_{[Webmaster's note: see within this website the chapter on preserving the first open-wire lead and its in situ location along I-90 near Tilford, South Dakota by this webmaster. Additionally, The Electric Orphanage of North America, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit is in the process of obtaining land for doing just as emphasized in the above article: a continental museum of not only early open-wire telephone beginnings but of electric power T&D and outdoor lighting.]}

The Song of the Open Wire

1843-2020

Guest Contributor Mel Berns

Mel’s Memorable Open Wire Experience