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Brian Inglis might have said:

In my experience the house wiring was colour-coded using standard quad (two pair) or three, four, or twenty-five pair cable as one would find most anywhere. In personal experience the larger vertical runs used up to 600 pair, I'd guess sometimes larger was called for but I don't know. As mentioned else-thread cables of more than twenty-five pair were bundles of twenty-five pair, buttembled with a repeating and cascaded colur code, thus uniquely identifying each wire within any given cable.

In commercial environments the cross connects (interconnects) at either an MDF0 or IDF1 that move circuits from vertical to horizontal (cables) would often be single pair but could be up to four pair (More? I don't know.) and of course the same two, three, four, or eight colours would be used repeatedly. This was usually not a problem because to trace within an M or I DF one could tug on the pairs of interest and see fairly well where the other end terminated. Sometimes a helper was needed, be it human or fox-hound tone sets, often in older and larger buildings which had suffered years of MAC's2.

There is a name for these interconnecting wires, something like patch wire or cross connect wire, but I cannot recall what it is. The wires3 would usually be on an open spool, Ty-wrapped or screwed to the wall in such a manner as to allow folks to spool out (pulled off) and punch down exactly the required amount for any given cross connect. A clean closet is an easy closet. Either the pair(s) used for cross connection or the block itself would usually be labelled. An exception I often found in Manhattan was that the identifying number on each end (if labelled at all) would add or subtract to a magic number having significance to the regular maintainer of the house plant. This was a form of job security as it would be difficult for any other person to work well in such an environment. On the other paw it often lead to pair stealing with the attendant hilarity, as you've mentioned.

I think a lot or most of this has been deprecated as CTI4 took hold and 'data-grade' wire was pulled everywhere for new work. On the other paw I haven't been buttociated with this sort of work in years.

In YADATROT, I found the old wiring usually sufficient for ARCNET, which itself was usually sufficient for the desktop needs of data processing until everyone 'needed' love^W multimedia on the desktop. I don't think anyone does data processing any more. Pity, it was very useful to businesses.

Whether or not I've gotten something wrong, and I'm certain I have, I'm sure someone will be along to correct me shortly.

0 MDF: Main Distribution Frame a-k-a main frame (Telco room in basement) This was often the entrance, or the first place a connection could be made within a building.

1 IDF: Intermediate Distribution Frame (Telco closet on (each) floor) This is where the real fan-out began, to desks (key equipment), data processing equipment, or other consumers of circuits.

2 MAC: Move, Add, Change.

3 They were wires, not cable: Twisted and no jacket, a state I can identify with.

4 CTI: Computer Telephony Integration. This term has been superseded by another, I'm sure.

-- 'After I started drinking yesterday I didn't do anything else stupid. That would seem to speak for itself.' Adam, in the Monastery.