ESS-1

The Number One Electronic Switching System (1ESS) was the first large-scale stored program control (SPC) telephone exchange or electronic switching system in the Bell System. It was manufactured by Western Electric and placed into service in Succasunna, New Jersey, in May 1965. The switching fabric was composed of a reed relay matrix controlled by wire spring relays which in turn were controlled by a central processing unit (CPU).

The 1AESS central office switch incorporated higher processing capacities based on the 1A Processor in 1976. It was a plug compatible upgrade with a faster processor that incorporated the existing instruction set for programming compatibility, and used smaller remreed switches, fewer relays, and featured disk storage.

The voice switching fabric plan was similar to that of the earlier 5XB switch in being bidirectional and in using the call-back principle. The largest full access matrix switches in the system, however, were 8x8 rather than 10x10 or 20x16. Thus they required eight stages rather than four to achieve large enough junctor groups in a large office. Crosspoints being more expensive in the new system but switches cheaper, system cost was minimized with fewer crosspoints organized into more switches. The fabric was divided into Line Networks and Trunk Networks of four stages, and partially folded to allow connecting line-to-line or trunk-to-trunk without exceeding eight stages of switching.

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