Based on a wide range of literature and sources, the author of the article sets a goal — to analyze the main ways of modernizing urban telephone communications during the first post-war five-year plans. To achieve this goal, several tasks are being accomplished. In particular, the role of telephone communication in the post-war period is determined within the national economic complex of the country as a whole. In the post-war era, telephone communication had evolved into an integral element of material production: technological processes, scientific research, the process of industrial co-operation, production management, etc. In addition, the typology of urban telephone networks (UTN) of this period is determined: the UTN was built and developed on the basis of centralized or decentralized system — thus, in their structure, they were divided into non-zoned and zoned. The key goal of the article is to analyze the technological evolution of telephone communications, namely: progress in the field of automatic telephone systems (ATS). The pre-war machine system of the automatic telephone systems, in spite of its high performance indicators, was considered technologically too complicated and time-consuming, and its mass production was considered inexpedient. It was replaced by the next generation of automatic telephone systems — stations of a ten-step system. However, in the process of the evolution of urban telephone networks, the drawbacks inherent in the ten-step systems were more and more affected. The analysis of various commutation systems revealed the expediency of using a coordinate connector, which led to the creation of a new type of automatic telephone systems — coordinate. Further modernization of the ATS coordinate system was carried out in two directions: first, the use of exclusively relay control; secondly, management based on electronic technology (mechanical-electronic automatic telephone exchange). The author emphasizes that despite the successes of research and development, the positive experience of operating coordinate systems, the quantitative growth of the country's telephone network until the late 1970s was implemented mainly on the basis of switching equipment of a ten-step system and only partially based on the introduction of coordinate systems. Thus, the author comes to the conclusion that the main directions of the post-war modernization of the UTN were: a gradual transition from manual to automatic systems, the introduction of more advanced step and coordinate systems of ATS, and wide-scale cabling of the linear systems. Analysis of the literature allows us to conclude that during the first postwar five-year plans, technological topology and the logical structure of the UTN developed, which almost unchanged existed until the end of the 20th century. At the same time, it is obvious that the country was only at the very beginning of a long way of modernization of telephone networks. It was necessary to automate the processes of servicing switching systems of UTN and network management; optimize the existing structure of the UTN. Along with the development of technical facilities and a quantitative increase in capacity, the communicators were faced with the task of improving the technical operation of equipment and servicing the population.
Source: Mirkin Vladimir V. (2018). Ways of modernization of the city telephone networks of the USSR in the post-war period (1945-1965). Tomsk State University Journal of History. № 54: 96–100
Source web-site: http://journals.tsu.ru/history/en/&journal_page=archive&id=1735&article_id=38826
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