On The Platform

I believe the dispatcher in the photo is Abe Silberberg. He was working in the Manhattan CO when the great blackout in the Northeastern United States happened.
 
The picture does indeed show the bin containing the running assignment cards for the Bronx. It also may have contained cards for Upper Manhattan boxes. There was a Manhattan-Bronx Interborough telegraph circuit. You would have to ask one of the oldtimers if the Bronx dispatcher could transmit a signal on the Manhattan primary and secondary alarm circuits and vice versa. Remember, Manhattan and the Bronx shared the same borough preliminary signal (6-6) and had no overlapping fire alarm box numbers.
 
entropychaser said:
The picture does indeed show the bin containing the running assignment cards for the Bronx. It also may have contained cards for Upper Manhattan boxes. There was a Manhattan-Bronx Interborough telegraph circuit. You would have to ask one of the oldtimers if the Bronx dispatcher could transmit a signal on the Manhattan primary and secondary alarm circuits and vice versa. Remember, Manhattan and the Bronx shared the same borough preliminary signal (6-6) and had no overlapping fire alarm box numbers.
Click to expand...

At one time Manhattan and the Bronx shared the same radio frequency, 154.25 MHz, before the Bronx went on with Staten Island, 154.19 mhz.
 
If you look over the dispatcher's left arm, you'll see a rectangular case containing multiple buttons (replacing Morse telegraph keys) to acknowledge in service taps (2-3) from the firehouse. Above that is a telegraph register and take-up reel which appears original issue(1910-1920). To the right is a borough radio microphone, a telephone probably purchased by Mayor LaGuardia, and an early iteration of a borough status board.....of course unused.
 
The Bronx CO September, 1967. I don't think Abe is too concerned with accidently shutting the whole operation down.
 
No matter how busy the boro was, especially during the "war years", all of the dispatchers remained calm on the air and at all the positions. My favorite Brooklyn voices were Warren Fuchs, Dick Lang, Frank Holt, Harold Goldberg, Ronnie Poe (spelling?), etc. Can't remember his name but was known as "Black cloud" and one known as "Mattress Back". Lloyd Moskowitz, I think.
 
The boss is Johnny Allen (disp, 23), the longtime gossip columnist in WNYF.

Martin Luther King had been shot on Thursday April 4th- 48 hours prior. The members had been run ragged afterwards. Friday night, FC Lowery held over the day tour. Ask our friend L103(ret) about Friday night.

In the building entrance vestibule there was a uniform from the local precinct. He told me he had orders to shoot anyone forcing entrance!

Photos are forever silent. But, the CO was an unrelenting circus- radio traffic. ringing phones, telegraphing signals, in-service taps, back and forth, the other boroughs' alarm circuits running, and the rustics from SI over the red voice alarm phone- all handled in an unruffled manner.

Shortly, this would all be gone. A telegrapher's fist replaced by typing skills, social interaction by a computer screen, and bedlam by the silence of a library. Now, it's just barely within living memory.
 
As the song says "Those were the days my Friend"

I worked with all of them, Also Bob LePage, Steve (whitefish) Ternlund, Richie Shierer, Mike Vitucci, Glen Gilberg. Too many to list
George Slattery, guys who were on the job during the war years should remember him. When he tapped out boxes over the bells, he was so fast we all just waited for the phones to ring asking what that box was. The calls did come,
Great times working at the Brooklyn CO.
Now no one will ever experience that.

"We thought they'd never end."
 
They always amazed me, how they kept things going while maintaining their composure. Good people doing a great job !!! As has been said, they knew their job and they knew their borough.
 
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