Hi Scott,
I know where you're coming from:
>If only conduit had been affordable then ... or that they had thought of that ... ;-) <
Actually, they did. Albeit, the conduit was of a slightly different construction. Flashback to Fifties and Sixties, some mid to late Seventies. All prior to the advent of fiber...
The outside sheath of that oversized cable, itself, served as the conduit, or a container, for 22 individual "tubes," as they were called. These made up the L4 and L5 analog FDM carrier systems.
Each 'tube' was itself a coaxial cable, made up of a center conductor, spacers (discs) every so many inches or feet, and an outside grounded mesh, all covered by insulation. Sometimes foam was used to separate the center conductor and the mesh, instead of spacer discs.
So, you can say that the cable in the photo, itself, served as a conduit, containing up to 22 other cables. When you were controlling market coverage and overall capacity availability, that's all you needed. And so it went...
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
