Stephen J. Cole

The heart of the V-Band system was relay rack mounted equipment mounted in the "backroom". This is an example of a card cage that I designed. It incorporate a back-plane (circuit card) in which various telecommunications "daughter" cards would be inserted.

The card cage viewed from behind. The black connectors along the bottom were for cables that connected the card cage public telephone network.

This is one of the circuit cards that fit into the card cage, the same concept as a PC with a mother board and daughter cards. This was a line card which made the connections between the stock trader's console and the public telephone network.

Here we have the card cages mounted in a commercially available electronics cabinet making up one neat package. The big boxes at the bottom are V-Band designed hot swap-able power supplies.

Here is the glamorous side of the system, the user interface or formally know as the trading turret. This is a second generation product, V-Band's first digital voice system. It's all metal construction made it withstand the punishment of irate stock brokers of which their are many. The section of switches on the left edge was known as a button field. Additional button fields could be added in groups of 30 to a maximum of 300 buttons or "lines". The mechanical design was executed by me of course.

The next generation turret was a collaboration between myself and an Industrial Design firm hired by V-Band. They did a nice job of developing the aesthetics but had a hard time trying to convert it into a device that could be economically manufactured. From there it became my baby. The device picture here is a non-functional wooden model.

This is what the production version Power Deck Console turned into.

A low end model of Power Deck without the detachable key pad was later released

I designed this device for the CBOT ( Chicago Board of Trade) for use on the commodities trading floor. Once again all metal construction to stand up to the abuse. Later it was adapted to use for by the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) when they moved their trading floor from the World Trade Center, to their own building on the west side of Manhattan about three years prior to the 9/11 tragedy. The electronics were modified and an auxiliary device was added to nest an additional four handsets for a total of six handsets per console. For this job I was the engineering project manager responsible for the mechanics, electronics and software required to fulfill the $14 million contract. The consoles and backroom equipment were delivered tested and working under schedule.