Transactions section: Preprint of corresponding pages from the current annual AIEE transactions volume: Recent developments in burying telephone cables

THE term “buried cables” has come to mean those underground cables which have no conduit protection. Due to the accelerated demand for such construction in recent years, much effort has been expended in devising methods and developing machinery for burying cables. One of the earlier methods used in this and some foreign countries was to dig a trench by hand alongside the road; unreel the cable from a moving truck, thus laying it beside the trench; work the cable over into the trench by having 30 to 50 men handle it in relays; splice the cable in the trench, and finally backfill the spoil and tamp it by hand. Later variations of this method introduced one or more of the following units of machine equipment: Power trenching machines. Caterpillar tractors with trailers to straddle the trench, laying the cable directly from the reel into the trench. Drag-line or other types of power backfillers. Power tampers or rollers.