Take me to the museum (if you can)

[Mr. Blister]

What might these have been for?

Since I've been doing a back-end lighting restore project, I'm mapping things out for cost/code/time consumption reasons. I saw this gang box with 2 switches in it that we never use (the toggles are always in the down position) and chose it to house a switch for a new LED fixture I bought. I tested the wires with my meter to be sure they had no load on them.

What I found seemed like old doorbell wire. Its a 3-conductor unshielded cable with solid wire in a brown jacket (looks like maybe 24 or 22 AWG). In this gang box there were two 3-way switches next to each other, which I though was odd since 3- ways are usually at either end of a hallway or stairwell. It appears to me like whoever put these in didn't know the difference between the grounding screw & the neutral traveler terminal on the switch. I physically tracked both these cables which remained running next to each other. They run up into the open ceiling over machines 7 & 8, then both turn with each other over the horizontal beams & sprinkler piping toward lane one, then I decided to stop following the cables once the turned into the ceiling over the side aisle next to lane 1 running toward the front-end of the center.

Could this have been for old scoring (Tel-E-Score or IC. I'm still in the process of removing the old switch assemblies from the Moving Decks)?

Could they at one time have controlled the foul units?

Maybe they were to turn off the regular fluorescent rows over the lane for night bowling ("Cosmic")? Our center no longer uses any of the overlane lights at any time. It's just a couple of rows of blacklights so that it's mellow over the lanes & the pin lamps appear brighter all the time.

Could they be supervisory for the old, original front desk switches for the banks of 8? We don't have the Bank-of-8 junction boxes on the curtain wall. They were removed before I began working here.

I'm super curious how common it is to find such wiring in a center.

IMG_20230514_135748553.jpg IMG_20230514_135821476.jpg IMG_20230514_135839760.jpg IMG_20230514_140108321.jpg IMG_20230514_140213084.jpg IMG_20230514_140203856.jpg

[mr.badwrench]

This has nothing to do with Tel E Score. That used 120 volt to light up a bulb and maybe a transformer for a cooling fan. The older Tel E Score bulbs were 750 watts and the newer were about 100 watt halogen.

The switches in your decks were originally for pinfinders which had a display on the masking unit or power lift. They may have also been used in early scoring.

What you found was probably a low voltage control for a relay somewhere up front. I have no guess what it was for.

[JoelJoanis]

Starshields ......

[Mr. Blister]

Starshields ......

Isn't that part of some of the old masking units (60s and 70s era)?

[JoelJoanis]

yes

[Wookie8662]

Could have been part of an old trouble signal system.
It would light up an indicator in the back end, and had a switch or button to reset (turn them off).
Alot of houses built in the 50s and 60s had them.

[Mr. Blister]

Could have been part of an old trouble signal system.
It would light up an indicator in the back end, and had a switch or button to reset (turn them off).
Alot of houses built in the 50s and 60s had them.

Place was built in 1964/65, so that would be a possibility, but it doesn't explain why they were set up the way they were.

Were these trouble systems some sort of illuminator and/or buzzer on the curtain wall or back wall or the ceiling which corresponded to a lane or lane pair? Why would there be 2 switches in behind a lane at the low end (I have not discovered switches that match or mimic these somewhere behind/around the high end). It's a 24 lane center, so I'm assuming one switch was for something among lanes 1 to 12 & the other for 13 to 24.

Maybe (hypothetically):
if the counter flipped a switch for a lane or pair that was within lanes 1 to 12 (lets say...they switched on the trouble signal for lane 4 up front because it had a 180 stop), you would reset (shut off then flip back on) the one switch controlling this 'trouble signal' with the 1-12 switch after you cleared the stop, and thus the corresponding light on the box at the counter would turn off so they knew you took care of the issue. Same deal if, for instance, there was an OOR on lane 19, I'd clear that & then walk down to the switch used for 13-24 to reset (shut off then flip back on) the trouble signal. ???????

Am I getting any warmer??????

The place has undergone renovation since it opened in the 60's, so the locations of things like the Service Counter, the bar(s) and break room may have shifted around for design modernization reasons.

I haven't found any electrical evidence of a conventional bowler-to-front counter Call Box at our center nor any old sort of Front Counter-to-back end switch/call box configuration. I've had these at other locations I've worked in. There's an "open mess" under the front desk counter top (where the Scorer Server is) that I might try looking harder at. There's a pink direct-line handset (looks like a Barbie play phone for girls) under there that they don't use any more that was for communication with the bowlers when they called the counter for any reason.

I will continue my quest for answers to this mystery over the following weeks (not gonna go out of my way by too much though because, from the looks of it, I'd have to walk a 9 foot folding ladder down the side aisle in darkness).

[mr.badwrench]

The trouble call system was used on old A pinsetters at one point. The middle switch on the rear of the wire channel was double pole double throw and there was a 4 pin cannon plug on top of the electrical box. The bowler would push a button, the pinchaser would flip the switch one way when he arrived at the pinsetter and the other way after clearing the stop.

Your mystery switch may have been one person's brainstorm installed in that one building and nowhere else.

[Mr. Blister]

The trouble call system was used on old A pinsetters at one point. The middle switch on the rear of the wire channel was double pole double throw and there was a 4 pin cannon plug on top of the electrical box. The bowler would push a button, the pin chaser would flip the switch one way when he arrived at the pinsetter and the other way after clearing the stop.

Your mystery switch may have been one person's brainstorm installed in that one building and nowhere else.

Thank you for being the one who bothered to take me to the museum.

[mr.badwrench]

Thank you for being the one who bothered to take me to the museum.

I didn't know much about this until I had a pinsetter with a 20,000 serial number that someone had rewired a bit. I found a pinsetter service manual with a red cover that was really old and had the wiring diagram for this. The rear switch was bad and when I found the middle rear switch was DPDT I used that diagram to figure out how to bring the rest of the wiring back to spec. As I remember it, the trouble call system had external power and wasn't connected to the pinsetter wiring at all. It just passed through the pinsetter from the cannon plug to the switch.

[Mr. Blister]

I didn't know much about this until I had a pinsetter with a 20,000 serial number that someone had rewired a bit. I found a pinsetter service manual with a red cover that was really old and had the wiring diagram for this. The rear switch was bad and when I found the middle rear switch was DPDT I used that diagram to figure out how to bring the rest of the wiring back to spec. As I remember it, the trouble call system had external power and wasn't connected to the pinsetter wiring at all. It just passed through the pinsetter from the cannon plug to the switch.

I researched it some yesterday after I saw what you said. I got a hold of a PDF version of the 1963 publication of the Model A manual on here. I looked over the wiring diagram, which basically tells us nothing specific (nor does explanation in the text. Just tells the mechanic that the Trouble Signal is an "accessory").

I guess it didn't prove to be effective & was a flop as far as call communications, otherwise we'd be dealing with it on more machines today & mentioning it more.

Huh. I'm still fascinated though.

What I need is a time machine.

[mickeygm]

I believe it would turn a light on at the Manager's Control panel letting them know the machine was down.