AT&T Long Lines "Oak Hill" Tower, San Jose, CA, 2021.
All the pixels, none of the per-minute toll charges, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51261791084/
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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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For much of the 20th century, the backbone of the AT&T "Long Lines" long distance telephone network consisted primarily of terrestrial microwave links (rather than copper or fiber cables). Towers with distinctive KS-15676 "horn" antennas could be seen on hilltops and atop switching center buildings across the US; they were simply part of the American landscape.
Most of the relay towers were simple steel structures. This brutalist concrete platform in San Jose was, I believe, of a unique design.
The San Jose Oak Hill Tower is unique in a number of ways. This particular concrete brutalist design appears not to have been used anywhere else; it seems to have been site-specific. It sits atop an underground switching center (that was partly used for a military contract), which explains the relatively hardened design.
Today the underground switch is still there, owned by AT&T, but the tower space is leased to land mobile and cellular providers. The old horn antennas at top are disconnected.
With a few exceptions (mostly towers atop downtown switching offices in populated areas), no one was trying to make any of this utilitarian communications infrastructure beautiful. It was form strictly following function, built to be reliable and rugged.
But there was, I think, quite a bit of beauty to find in it. I wonder if we'll look at our current neighborhood cellular towers, now often regarded as a visual blight, the same way decades after they're (inevitably) also gone.
@mattblaze@federate.social I will be making a religious pilgrimage to the the KS-15676 horn used to discover the cosmic background this summer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawford_Hill
Also here's the installation manual if anyone needs it: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/3567396/Bell-System-Ks-15676.html#manual
@0xF21D@infosec.exchange As is the duty of all nerds to do during their lifetime.
(BTW, that's not actually a KS-15676 antenna, though it's a similar design. It was custom made for the site, and is a bit larger than the antennas used in the long lines network)
@mattblaze@federate.social I stand corrected! Thank you!
@mattblaze@federate.social there's definitely beauty to be found in something that's well designed to be useful.
I think a lot of people just have expectations, and get upset when their expectations don't match the current reality
@mattblaze@federate.social
the old one and two-story Central Office buildings for phone company equipment were pretty stark.
(unloading those windowless COs was almost as difficult as repurposing abandoned movie theaters with their sloping floors)
@mattblaze@federate.social
This microwave tower is near me, and I've never known what it was for. Could it be part of that "long lines" network?
@marymessall@mendeddrum.org oh, very interesting design. I’ve not seen one like that before. Not clear if it was originally Long Lines; there aren’t any of the original horn antennas, so if it had been, all the old antennas have been removed.
@mattblaze@federate.social
Looks like it was! I found it on this map:
https://long-lines.com/map/original
See...
https://long-lines.com/viewsite/6234
@marymessall@mendeddrum.org Cool! Very unusual design; not seen anything like it.