Launch Control Switchboard
Though I’m not entirely sure whether this switchboard actually controlled the launch sequence, or it was related in some other way to the 576A-3 Atlas D site on Vandenberg, but it looked as if it had been sitting there since Nov 7, 1967, when the final Atlas D was launched, and a new era in America’s defense history had begun.
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9 comments
William Ward wrote...
TB, it looks like a complex multiline phone. The hold and release buttons near the bottom, and the number of dedicated buttons for the different end points just above them. Intercom and such.
I wonder how many other military installations have similarly abandoned equipment - rather than dismantling or cleaning up, just left for 20, 30, 40 years.
Zeno wrote...
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Show ur Snaps, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
Sean Galbraith wrote...
"We need to reach the president!"
"Give me 5 minutes so I can dial the phone"
Jonathan Haeber wrote...
@SMLGphotos : HA! That's exactly what I was thinking. You'd think with all the billions invested in the missile programs they would have figured out a touch-tone phone system by then :-)
Sean Galbraith wrote...
"Why did the number have to be 000-0000!?"
William Ward wrote...
Damn, my luggage just opened.
Nina Alter wrote...
I love the showcasing of analog technology- go go telephone DIAL, go!
cultphotos wrote...
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Forgotten Legacy Urban Explorers, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
The lighting on this shot is prefect.