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Show Telephone company fights gophers Mountain States Telephone is pulling ahead in its lengthy battle to keep Utah gophers from controlling the company's underground telephone lines. After the expenditure of many thousands of dollars for underground cable replacement and the investment of countless manhours in their repair, a new type of "gopher-proof" coaxial cable has been developed. devel-oped. It has all but eliminated the "gnawing" problem of gophers shorting out the underground un-derground telephone lines by chewing through their outer coverings. Referred to as 'H' Cable, this new design in gopher protection protec-tion consists of alternate layers of hard plastic, corrugated soldered seam steel, thermoplastic, thermo-plastic, cement and polyethy lene, each tightly wrapped around the telephone wires inside. in-side. This formidable arrangement arrange-ment of protection has proved successful where previously used outer coverings were no match for the foot-long Utah gophers. Prior to the development of this highly-resistant new outer out-er sheath for cables, the gophers go-phers menace was a very real one for telephone customers in some areas of the state. Richmond, Rich-mond, Huntsville. Kaysville and Richfield were among the areas bothered by the appetites of local lo-cal gophers. The gophers would chew through the outer coverings cover-ings of the underground cables, allowing water to enter and short out the line, thus interrupting inter-rupting telephone service. The new cable was developed over a number of years in actual ac-tual gopher-gnawing tests conducted con-ducted at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Lab-oratories, 212 acre Outside Plant Laboratory at Chester, New Jersey. |