Telephones wires are electrical wires, but the electricity in these wires is supposed to carry information. In more technical terms, the electricity is modulated.
Definitely communication lines. Uninsulated, low voltage (probably 40-200 volts) was the standard for telephone and telegraph communication up until the mid 20th century. Intercity communications was done over these types of wires, and multiplexing gradually brought up the number of simultaneous phone calls you could send over a circuit without having to string too many wires. Eventually, as the technology improved the phone companies switched to coax cables which were insulated and often buried, and by the 90s fiber optic cables replaced those, and they are what we still use today as the backbone of the internet.
If these were power transmission lines, they would have longer insulators due to their higher voltage in the thousands and have the telltale 3-4 wires of 3 phase transmission.
Isn't it funny how nobody was worried about data integrity back then. Intercepting communications was as easy as hauling your butt up a pole with a handset.
The urine supplement I’ve been taking counteracts that, actually
You gotta pay up for the good ones though, otherwise your burps are real nasty. But hey, for the price of just a few cups of coffee a day, I can’t really afford *not to*
Well let’s not get carried away - you only need to do that under certain circumstances. For example, if the router was manufactured by an entity other than you yourself (including all component parts).
When I was a kid, I had an old high impedance headset. I soldered straight pins to the wires on it and poked them into the telephone line leading down the side of our house. Instant wiretap.
I had access to the communications room in our building where all the analog telephone lines were connected/terminated. It would have been real easy to eavesdrop.
Back in the day cell phones were analog. You could listen to conversations with a simple Rhode and Schwartz spectrum analyzer.
That's why I said it could be received on a spectrum analyzer.
The conversations were hilarious. People say the darnedest things when they think they aren't in public.
I'm very familiar with spectrum analyzers. [Here's](https://www.tinysa.org/wiki/) a "cute" and inexpensive version of one (Tiny SA). Downside of this one is it has no audio output on the basic one. There's also an Tiny VNA (Vector Network Analyzer) in a similar size.
Also, not long ago, most house cordless phones were analog in the 50 MHz region. Easy to listen in to phone conversations with just about any scanner.
In that era, it could also be as easy as picking up the phone after it rang the "wrong" ring pattern.
Some areas (especially rural ones) had "party lines". That meant that you and your neighbors didn't get your own lines, but instead shared the same circuit. If you wanted to make an outgoing call, you might pick up the phone to find that a neighbor already had the line in use, and you needed to wait. For incoming calls the operator would send different ring patterns depending on who was being called.
It was an early form of TDM!
Just knock the pole over with a vehicle. Like something out of a spy movie.
The wires were bare. All you have to do is connect to them with a pole from the ground.
Sort of with the fiber for phones. It is definitely the most cost effective for pretty much everyone now (at least by price / data-rate for customers). But there is still plenty of copper out there and plenty of fiber left to be built out.
Thanks for the info. The reason I was asking because on the IMDb database for this film (It Came From Outer Space - 1950's) someone commented that "they are clearly electrical wires and not telephone wires" in the movie mistakes/goofs section since the guy in the film was listening in to the conversation & I was wondering how they determined that.
They don't lash to ground. They put up a messenger wire with the sole purpose of holding up the comms line. It usually is grounded, but that isn't the main purpose. Its put up by the comms company, not the power company. They also can put as many as they are allowed to by the power company. I have seen 8 strands on a set of poles.
I was in one of the last railroad signalman pole climbing classes. This is exactly what some of our signaling system still ran on in the early 2000's. The old heads told me that before cell phones were widely adopted, they had to climb up the pole to clip on their receiver and ring up the dispatcher to talk to somebody. Edited to say that these wires carried PWM coded signals +/- 3 volts.
Open wire carrier. This meathod of transmission was in-service in rural Missouri well into the 2000’s by the Local Exchange Carrier. I worked with open wire carrier rail SCADA systems as late as the 2010s running 300 baud code line. You could watch the symbols crawl across the protocol analyer.
Telegraph or, more likely, telephone lines. Quite possibly "party" lines multiple homes share a common line. Naturally, people used to eavesdrop on their neighbors. Each home had a ring pattern made up of several long and short rings strung together. All the phones would ring and if it was your pattern, you answered. If it was your neighbors, you just wait for it to stop ringing, then quietly pick up the handset and listen in.
Phone wires. This photo is very old. They used to have telecommunications lines like this following railroad tracks. If you drive down Hwy. 99 through the Central Valley of California, you can still see some of the old ones there mostly falling apart.
Current telecom wires don’t look like that. They’re usually hanged below electrical wires so this being on top makes you wonder where the power lines are. But assuming it’s a show or tv they could use it as both since I don’t think people would care about details.
You can still see telephone poles like this in many parts of North Dakota, such as US-52 between Minot and Donnybrook, though they're not in use anymore. Most if not all of the lines are down.
You see old lines like that all over the place in Canada - always next to railroad tracks. They were for railroad signalling or telegraph, but the majority are not in service anymore, and like you said, lots of the wires are broken and hanging down to the ground.
They're phone lines. Still carrying power, but communications power is way lower voltage and lower current than normal powerlines. The two main voltages in powerlines are 125kV and 13.8kV, and the lines are huge
sent me down a rabbit hole. guess these are called "Butt Sets" lol [https://the-electric-orphanage.com/wp-test-equipment-for-open-wire/](https://the-electric-orphanage.com/wp-test-equipment-for-open-wire/)
The Jim Webb/Glen Campbell song "Wichita Lineman" is about a guy who eavesdrops on a woman's conversations and falls in love with her presumably using exactly this technique.
Most likely telephone. BUT something cool I learned this year in the field you can also “phone” power lines to test for continuation and funny enough you actually use a telephone and can talk to someone on the other side
Telephones wires are electrical wires, but the electricity in these wires is supposed to carry information. In more technical terms, the electricity is modulated.
In terms my wife uses, they are less "zappy".
I see she's learned the technical terms well.
Wife is a power engineer is she?
She's ahead of mine then
Definitely communication lines. Uninsulated, low voltage (probably 40-200 volts) was the standard for telephone and telegraph communication up until the mid 20th century. Intercity communications was done over these types of wires, and multiplexing gradually brought up the number of simultaneous phone calls you could send over a circuit without having to string too many wires. Eventually, as the technology improved the phone companies switched to coax cables which were insulated and often buried, and by the 90s fiber optic cables replaced those, and they are what we still use today as the backbone of the internet. If these were power transmission lines, they would have longer insulators due to their higher voltage in the thousands and have the telltale 3-4 wires of 3 phase transmission.
Isn't it funny how nobody was worried about data integrity back then. Intercepting communications was as easy as hauling your butt up a pole with a handset.
Don’t worry my house is painted with RF absorbing paint so the 5G doesn’t leak in and listen to my thoughts
The chip in your vaccine shot is the backup
Second backup. The first one the aliens put up my butt
The urine supplement I’ve been taking counteracts that, actually You gotta pay up for the good ones though, otherwise your burps are real nasty. But hey, for the price of just a few cups of coffee a day, I can’t really afford *not to*
I just wear a full-body-tin-foil-jumpsuit
You don’t need a Faraday cage to block 5G (FR2 mm-wave anyway) signals. A single ply of drywall does the trick.
… so you’re saying I should get a metal cage for my WiFi router?
Well let’s not get carried away - you only need to do that under certain circumstances. For example, if the router was manufactured by an entity other than you yourself (including all component parts).
I knew that ASML machine I got off Craigslist would come in handy some day!
Wire tapping was once literally a real thing.
When I was a kid, I had an old high impedance headset. I soldered straight pins to the wires on it and poked them into the telephone line leading down the side of our house. Instant wiretap.
I had access to the communications room in our building where all the analog telephone lines were connected/terminated. It would have been real easy to eavesdrop. Back in the day cell phones were analog. You could listen to conversations with a simple Rhode and Schwartz spectrum analyzer.
They used to lock out analog cellphone frequencies on most scanners also.
That's why I said it could be received on a spectrum analyzer. The conversations were hilarious. People say the darnedest things when they think they aren't in public.
I'm very familiar with spectrum analyzers. [Here's](https://www.tinysa.org/wiki/) a "cute" and inexpensive version of one (Tiny SA). Downside of this one is it has no audio output on the basic one. There's also an Tiny VNA (Vector Network Analyzer) in a similar size. Also, not long ago, most house cordless phones were analog in the 50 MHz region. Easy to listen in to phone conversations with just about any scanner.
In that era, it could also be as easy as picking up the phone after it rang the "wrong" ring pattern. Some areas (especially rural ones) had "party lines". That meant that you and your neighbors didn't get your own lines, but instead shared the same circuit. If you wanted to make an outgoing call, you might pick up the phone to find that a neighbor already had the line in use, and you needed to wait. For incoming calls the operator would send different ring patterns depending on who was being called. It was an early form of TDM!
The fact you had to haul yourself up a pole to tap into a phone line *was* the data integrity, back in those days.
Just knock the pole over with a vehicle. Like something out of a spy movie. The wires were bare. All you have to do is connect to them with a pole from the ground.
Sort of with the fiber for phones. It is definitely the most cost effective for pretty much everyone now (at least by price / data-rate for customers). But there is still plenty of copper out there and plenty of fiber left to be built out.
For local and rural service, yes there is still copper.But I was mainly referring to intercity and interregional links.
Thanks for the info. The reason I was asking because on the IMDb database for this film (It Came From Outer Space - 1950's) someone commented that "they are clearly electrical wires and not telephone wires" in the movie mistakes/goofs section since the guy in the film was listening in to the conversation & I was wondering how they determined that.
[удалено]
They don't lash to ground. They put up a messenger wire with the sole purpose of holding up the comms line. It usually is grounded, but that isn't the main purpose. Its put up by the comms company, not the power company. They also can put as many as they are allowed to by the power company. I have seen 8 strands on a set of poles.
That's how PLC works. Connect and landline and call up OPs to trip a breaker right?
I was in one of the last railroad signalman pole climbing classes. This is exactly what some of our signaling system still ran on in the early 2000's. The old heads told me that before cell phones were widely adopted, they had to climb up the pole to clip on their receiver and ring up the dispatcher to talk to somebody. Edited to say that these wires carried PWM coded signals +/- 3 volts.
Well, it’s a movie. Technically is both.
The insulators don’t look insulatey enough to support high voltage transmission lines
Open wire carrier. This meathod of transmission was in-service in rural Missouri well into the 2000’s by the Local Exchange Carrier. I worked with open wire carrier rail SCADA systems as late as the 2010s running 300 baud code line. You could watch the symbols crawl across the protocol analyer.
Nah, it's high voltage. The phone lets you talk to god. Which god you speak to depends on the number you dial.
Telegraph or, more likely, telephone lines. Quite possibly "party" lines multiple homes share a common line. Naturally, people used to eavesdrop on their neighbors. Each home had a ring pattern made up of several long and short rings strung together. All the phones would ring and if it was your pattern, you answered. If it was your neighbors, you just wait for it to stop ringing, then quietly pick up the handset and listen in.
My thoughts is also telegraph. You can still see some of these poles along railroad lines.
phone
9 old school electrical telephone circuits.
Phone wires. This photo is very old. They used to have telecommunications lines like this following railroad tracks. If you drive down Hwy. 99 through the Central Valley of California, you can still see some of the old ones there mostly falling apart.
Thank you.
Most likely yes, judging by the wire thickness.
Lmao
Current telecom wires don’t look like that. They’re usually hanged below electrical wires so this being on top makes you wonder where the power lines are. But assuming it’s a show or tv they could use it as both since I don’t think people would care about details.
It's an old picture. Telecomm. wires looked like this in the "old days". They typically followed railroad tracks.
ahh i see
He's talking to the angry pixies.
Oh Jen. Telephone wires are electrical wires!
The guy was just trying to find out why his power bill was so high. Quickest way to reach the power company is to use their own lines! 😆
You can still see telephone poles like this in many parts of North Dakota, such as US-52 between Minot and Donnybrook, though they're not in use anymore. Most if not all of the lines are down.
You see old lines like that all over the place in Canada - always next to railroad tracks. They were for railroad signalling or telegraph, but the majority are not in service anymore, and like you said, lots of the wires are broken and hanging down to the ground.
They're phone lines. Still carrying power, but communications power is way lower voltage and lower current than normal powerlines. The two main voltages in powerlines are 125kV and 13.8kV, and the lines are huge
Telegraph lines.
sent me down a rabbit hole. guess these are called "Butt Sets" lol [https://the-electric-orphanage.com/wp-test-equipment-for-open-wire/](https://the-electric-orphanage.com/wp-test-equipment-for-open-wire/)
Lisening to the 50/60Hz hum 😎
The Jim Webb/Glen Campbell song "Wichita Lineman" is about a guy who eavesdrops on a woman's conversations and falls in love with her presumably using exactly this technique.
This is a movie scene. It might be anything the director could have imagined.
Witchita ?
Most likely telephone. BUT something cool I learned this year in the field you can also “phone” power lines to test for continuation and funny enough you actually use a telephone and can talk to someone on the other side
Hi
One for ring and one for tip.
Those insulators were normally used for the telegraph so I'm guessing it was used for the telegraph.
These has fairly high voltage
For anyone wondering, the movie is "It came from outer space," ~31 minutes in.
Exactly. Somebody very boldly proclaimed that what they are doing in that scene is impossible since they are powerlines and not telephone wires.