Obtained : 1981
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double click on a picture to enlarge it. |
| the exchange | front view | label | circuit |
In 1979, I worked at that time for two years at the ATEA R&D PABX lab, I encountered this kind of exchange in a shop full of junk at the southside of Antwerp. The guy asked 3000 Belgian Francs (75 euro) which was back then a lot of money.
Accidently, I came back in the same shop in the summer of 1981, and the exchange was still there, but he had reduced the prize to 900 Belgian Francs (+/- 22,5 Euro) which was acceptable.
I purchased the exchange, and brought the "portable" device back home. My wife was not happy ;-). It was a hell of a job to bring this "portable" (to army standards) upstairs just by myself (since my wife didn't want to help).
It is a 12 line non blocking exchange, manufactured by a Canadian company called F&F. I presume it was used by the Belgian Army, and abandoned sometime in the 1970s.
I could not figure out if the Belgian Army purchased the Equipment in Canada, or maybe it came to Belgium during world war II by the allies.
Recently I obtained a "user manual" from the Belgian Army , from the "transmissieschool te Vilvoorde", dated 1964, through Erik De Cooman.
21/09/2019: I obtained some corrections from Ian Jolly (UK):
It is in fact a
‘Switchboard, Field and Fortress’ used from towards the end of WW2 well into the
1960’s when more modern equipment had arrived with changes of technology.
Somewhere I have the manual on the switchboard. However it is not a ‘12 line
switchboard’ - those are the clearing indicators for the 12 cord circuits.
Unfortunately, you only have the lower part of the switchboard, up to three
additional ‘line units’ were mounted on top. Most were magneto lines but others
could accommodate incoming lines from CB, CBS and automatic exchanges thus
providing a 60 line switchboard. A maximum of three switchboards could be
provided side by side to produce a 180 line exchange. Your one is a British one
manufactured by the
Telephone Manufacturing Company as shown by the label on the keyshelf. . A
lot of UK Royal Signals equipment was also used by armies from the then British
Empire such as Canada and Australia. Probably the best known item was the Army’s
‘Wireless Set No 19’ of which there was a version manufactured in Canada. The
‘Royal Canadian Signals’ website of signals equipment has a webpage on the
F&F Switchboard but it was never known as ‘Fixed & Field’ - the manual shows
it is ‘Field and Fortress’ and that is always what we knew it as.
As already said in a shop full of junk, see above.
Last changed on 24/04/22 by Jan