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Dog fixes phone...

PHONE REPAIR Longmont, CO December 12, 2008

A Colorado farm wife called the local phone company to report her telephone failed to ring when her friends called - and that on the few occasions, when it did ring, her dog always moaned right before the phone rang.

The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile lady. He climbed a telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's house.

The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned and the telephone began to ring.

Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found:

  1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire with a steel chain and collar.

  1. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose.

  2. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the number was called.

  1. After a couple of jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate.

  2. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to ring.

Which demonstrates that some problems CAN be fixed by pissing and moaning. Thought you'd like to know.

Reply to
bob urz
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Hi!

While it's an amusing story, I'm pretty sure you'll find that its authenticity is dubious and that substantially the same story has been passed around in several different settings.

The one I'm familiar with is set in the UK, but all other major details remain similar.

Can't find it on snopes but I'm pretty sure it's there *somewhere*.

William

Reply to
William R. Walsh

No ground connection on UK phones.

--
*Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat*

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

It sounds like a backwards construction from "pissing and moaning".

I've been reading a book on the history of telecommunication. Using the earth as a return path was abandoned in the late 19th century, because it allowed all sorts of electrical garbage to get into the telephone signal.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

I did wonder. Ground returns were sometimes used much later to provide a phantom circuit(s) over two ordinary pairs. But poor quality.

--
*A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France resulted in Linoleum

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Bit like the UK student wheeze of getting (or not) their professor of electronics testing the earthing of the phone system by phoning him and getting him to fill a bucket with water and then putting a foot in it.

Reply to
N_Cook

It was funny no matter how true it was...

I read another one in an electrical contractor magazine.

An individual reported getting shocked when he went in his aluminum back door. People thought he was nuts. Turned out, when a contractor was putting in some siding that had insulation with a aluminum backing on it, a nail penetrated both the siding a a live wire that was too close to it. This made a path somehow to energize the door.

bob

Reply to
bob urz

The last knew in 1977, Nevada had one line of ground return. As far as I can remember it was about 10 miles long.

Bill K7NOM

Reply to
Bill Janssen

Phantom circuits using two pair of wires did not use ground return. And the quality of speech was as good as the "side" circuits with maybe reduced loss. The "side" circuits have to be identical though. If they are not, then from the unbalance, you can get noise and power line hum.

Bill K7NOM

Reply to
Bill Janssen

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in news:hp7tsl$7pc$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

HAH,it STILL gets in there..

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com
Reply to
Jim Yanik

This is exactly what happened with the Australian home insulation fiasco.

Background is: Government thinks it would be a good idea to subsidise the installation of home roofing. Allows all and sundry to do the job. All and sundry suddenly can't cater for the demand, and start hiring local Joe Idiot as a contractor/worker.

So far this is OK, but installers stopped using normal pink batts, and started using thinner insulation with aluminium backing (lots cheaper, so through the subsidy, they make lots more money), laying that over the roofing structure, and nailing it in place.

Local Joe Idiot who doesn't understand anything about that black magic called electricity, promptly hammers the nails through live wires, and kills himself.

That happened four times so far if I recall the reports, along with the usual spouts of house fires if the installers weren't killed right away.

Even the pink batts were not immune from screwups. Apparently, local Joe Idiot was placing the fibres directly over downlights. No ventilation means heat, means fire, means house burning down.

They're still arguing on who to blame. The Government who fostered the greedy environment, the registered installers who were legally allowed to hire morons AND for apparently not training them, but have stopped short of blaming the four who have died, because they didn't know that putting a nail through a live electrical cable will probably kill you. Or it's not politically correct or some such rubbish.

All of the above would be my vote.

Reply to
John Tserkezis

Yes, but this was "mass quantities" that sometimes obliterated the speech.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

On 4/3/2010 7:06 AM William R. Walsh spake thus:

Killjoy!

--
You were wrong, and I'm man enough to admit it.

- a Usenet "apology"
Reply to
David Nebenzahl

A standard phantom circuit does not indeed use a ground return. But some versions do. Early railway signalling circuits, for example. Or a second phantom circuit from two pairs.

--
*Cleaned by Stevie Wonder, checked by David Blunkett*

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

For some systems, (Bell, I think), party line phones used various connections so that only the called party heard the ring. It allowed three households per line. tip-ring, tip-ground, ring-ground.

That's how my parent's house (installed in late '40s) is wired inside. Tip and ring on a twisted pair and ground, at each 4 pin outlet. Originally a party line, but they converted everybody to private lines in the late 1950's.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

Reply to
Mark Zenier

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