
100 Years Ago, a Telephone Tower in Stockholm Connected 5000 Phone Lines (2014) - lelf
https://twistedsifter.com/2014/08/stockholm-telephone-tower-connects-5000-lines/
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martyvis
Being not aware of this type of thing anywhere else ( except maybe those
overloaded street corner phone poles you see in Asia) it would seem either
this was extremely early and advanced and in a very affluent, high density
city that could justify and capitalise on its benefits very early or that in
other places they realised it didn't scale and went with street poles and pits
and exchanges and benefited from later adoption. Where was London or New York
or Paris in terms of telephone subscriber adoption at the time?

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null_object
>either this was extremely early and advanced and in a very affluent, high
density city that could justify and capitalise on its benefits...

People visiting Stockholm nowadays - or even people _living_ there, for that
matter - have little idea how poor and slum-ridden the city was just fifty
years ago: the town center was full of small and cramped apartments housing
whole families in single rooms, lacking bathrooms and toilets (everyone shared
a row of earth toilets in the yard, and washed once a week in communal baths).

So, based on the high-tech and affluent Stockholm you see now, it’s easy to
jump to the conclusion that this was an “early and advanced” technical
solution, when actually it’s simply a product of the very small scale of the
town. The area ‘inomtullarna’ (which comprises the entire city center,
excluding the dormitory suburbs), could easily fit inside the single London
borough of Camden, for instance.

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jeltz
Yes as a native I have heard if this, but Sweden was also a relatively rich
and technologically advanced country at the time despite all the slums of
Stockholm so I assume there must have been wealthy parts too.

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groundlogic
The switchboard room inside that building is also pretty fancy looking:

[https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allmänna_Telefonaktiebolagets_...](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allmänna_Telefonaktiebolagets_hus#/media/Fil:Allmänna_Telefonaktiebolagets_första_telefonsal.jpg)

Even more photos here: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/tekniskamuseet-
telehistoriska/...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/tekniskamuseet-
telehistoriska/albums/72157626273929661)

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NKosmatos
Nice photos. Extra info about “telefontornet” can be found in
[https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2014/10/when-the-
telephone-...](https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2014/10/when-the-telephone-
lines-darkened-the-sun-in-stockholm)

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dang
A thread from 2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546715)

I feel like there have been others. Anybody find one?

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drewcoo
From the article, the tower had been decommissioned over a century before the
article was published a few years ago. This is Victorian-era tech; steampunk
but real. This was not high tech post-WWI, as the headline would indicate.

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alexis_fr
Ah, so that’s what it means to be connected to the cloud?

I think this is a suitable example for the “Clean Code” book, the chapter
about refactoring.

And also: Do you think they’ve built a mock somewhere with 5000 phones as a
test rig?

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danielscrubs
That’s awesome how the could align the coords like that. Reminds me of Osaka
where I could look up and see phone lines everywhere. It was beautiful in a
chaotic and nostalgic kind of way.

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Aeolun
There’s something incredibly reassuring about seeing your 1Gbit line
physically enter your house from the street pole.

It also makes the city seems like cyberpunk central, which is pretty cool.

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davidw
Then they redid everything in Erlang.

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widforss
The central switch near this tower was the subject of mass surveillance during
WWII. They basically employed a massive amount of women who were just
listening in on phone calls trying to find criminal activity and national
security concerns.

Source: W. Agrell, Vem kan man lita på?, ISBN 9789175452395

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qrbLPHiKpiux
Just like room 641A, Folsum St, San Francisco.

Fascinating how technology changes but humans don't.

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operauser
Small Village solution implemented in large scale. They also tried one big
switchboard, but finally ended up with some 50 operators with common trunk
lines. Last time I saw Telephone Tower was in Suomenlinna 1950's with 30 lines
and it was already a rats' nest.

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delinka
When this was built, was it assumed that this would be a temporary structure?
Was there any long-term thinking at all, or just an immediate need?

Also, this thing looks like a fabulous lightning distribution network during
thunderstorms.

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acd
Related: There is a whole sub reddit cableporn in which people compete who
makes the neatest cable wirings.

Https://Reddit/r/cableporn

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Animats
Insulation was a big problem before plastics. Varnished cloth, mostly. Hence
so much open wire.

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mbruce
I suspect this is effectively a an aerial copper cross connect / distribution
location

