From my post to FB group Bell Telephone…
Around 1967 I was on leave from the army, and our mentor took a friend and I down to San Diego to troubleshoot the comms system on the USS Ticonderoga. Here I was on leave from eating in a mess hall, and we ate lunch in the ship’s mess hall. They had Strowger switches, and I nosed around and found out what was causing the constant alarm condition: it was a piece of a cleaning rag stuck between the contacts! Here was an example of cleanliness causing problems. Our mentor went about his business doing other things, and between us we got things straightened out. And our mentor ended up collecting a nice bit of $$ for a day’s work. I guess this was my first intro to telephone switching equipment, if you can call the ship’s comm system a central office.
I just remembered that one other thing our mentor did was clean the contacts of the generator / interruptor that generated dial tone, busy signal, etc.
