AT&T Archives: Switchboards, Old and New (Bonus Edition)

[Music] soon after the 1876 invention of the telephone it became clear that the real challenge would be connecting all the calls by 1932 when switchboards old Anu was produced there were nearly 18 million phones in the United States and switchboard technology was rapidly evolving here at the 18g archives in History Center you will find many generations the switchboards this was one of the earliest modeled after the first switchboard installed in New Haven Connecticut this board was installed three days later in the second commercial telephone exchange in Meriden Connecticut On January 31st 1878 when the call was received one of these metal flags would drop look for a similar model in action in the film this switchboard is from 1923 it's a section of the number nine toll switch from the last manual switchboard in 18 T's Bell system it was installed on Catalina Island off the coast of California where it remained in service until 1978 both of these were used in phone company exchanges but this one was used in a PBX or private branch exchange these switchboards were designed for private operators directing calls in and out of hotels or business offices this model was used in New York City at 550 Madison Avenue from 1984 to 1986 today many businesses use virtual switchboards in which calls are directed automatically using an interactive voice response system but after watching the film you may find yourself wishing for the days when you picked up the receiver and heard em burpees there it is millions of times a day in America someone has a message for someone else a signal is flash it's answered a highway for quick private travel is needed the routes are selected joined together and then the intricate and sensitive apparatus for all this is had a most romantic history of development reaching the voice from one line to another was first tried over the wires of a burglar alarm system in Boston in May 1877 a little more than a year after the telephone had transmitted the first complete sentence the manager of this system put telephone instruments in the offices of five of his customers for a few days and connected one with another through switches in his own office it was over a year after Alexander Graham Bell had begun to demonstrate his invention that there was a commercial telephone switchboard it was put in service in New Haven Connecticut On January 28th 1878 here is a model of it it had eight lines with a total of 21 subscribers so the operator wasn't very busy hello hello what do you want pink city market what's your name oh alright dr. Barlow just a minute hello hello City Market someone wants to talk to you wait a minute all right dr. burr whoa is hitting's market go ahead and yet there was not any voice with a smile as this New York switchboard the 1879 model makes clear very clear here's the way it was awful [Music] history tells us that two subscribers had difficulty in getting connections the history is probably right about it now for the sake of contrast let's glance at an operating room of today this is an unusual picture because few operating rooms are long enough for switchboard of this size to be built without curves or angles it can serve as many as ten thousand five hundred lines some peculiar switching devices made their appearance during the first few years of switchboard development this one for example could accommodate only a small number of lines but it is the first to introduce the key shelf which had such an important development and the cord circuit sections could be installed side by side and take care of 200 or 300 lines but his telephone central offices increased in size this method became difficult and awkward and was generally unsatisfactory until the invention in 1882 of the multiple switchboard the thought underlying the multiple switchboard was that an operator must be able to connect any one of the particular group of lines she answered with any other line on the entire switchboard at meant that terminals for every line had to appear somewhere within the reach of every operator these terminals which were small circular openings on a switchboard were called jacks for example terminal jacks for line 1 2 3 4 appeared a number of times on the switchboard but all of them were connected together and any operator at the entire switchboard could establish a connection to line 1 2 3 4 Hertz splendid idea but how was an operator to know whether or not a line she wished to connect to was busy perhaps an operator at another part of the switchboard had already established a connection to the lines a quick and accurate means was devised by the operator before plugging in touched the tip of her plug to the rim of the jack if a sharp click was produced in a receiver it meant that the line was busy if no click was heard it meant that the line was not in use and she could establish the connection another very important milestone in switchboard progress with the introduction of the common battery system this enabled one large storage battery in the central office to supply the current for talking replacing the individual batteries on the subscribers premises of course local conditions determined when a common battery can be used economically for a scattered population where switchboards are smaller in size talking current is supplied by dry batteries installed with each telephone and generators are used to signal the operator and drop signals instead of electric light serve to attract her attention this type of switchboard is known as a Magneto board from successive improvements a switchboard of today was evolved here it is the a board or answering board in a large central office notice the orderly but complex system of wiring under the key felt your telephone line terminates in a jack and lamp when you remove the receiver the lamp lights instantly and your call is answered by one of the operators before whom the light appears by this arrangement there's always an operator ready to take your call usually the operator ta board passes the call to another type of board for completion it's known the telephone people as the B board or competing board you'll notice that the face of this board is full of the openings called jacks but there are no accompanying lamp signals for every two or three operators at a b board there's one of these jacks associated with your telephone this type of multiple arrangement was developed directly from that first used in 1882 if your line is not busy the operator inserts the plug in the jack and the ringing starts automatically you defined that special private switchboards are used in business offices there are many types and sizes some serve a few telephones in a small office others are designed to interconnect hundreds of telephones in a large organization one of the largest of these private switchboards is in the new york hotel 24 operators consider that switchboard that utilizes 139 trunk lines the telephone central offices and serves over 3,000 telephones within the hotel if you ever visit a toll a long-distance operating room here's another type of switchboard that you will see now these are also multiple switchboards so that direct lines to many out of town points are within immediate reach of every operator in a dial office the switching equipments automatically gives you the number dialed nor else reports that it's bidding there is however switchboard with operators in every dial office here is one if you call a number that's been changed or disconnected for example your call is automatically routed to one of these operators or if you dial operator one of them will answer you if your dial operator in an emergency and call for the fire department of the police department or for an ambulance one of these operators will not only complete your call but will supervise it personally until your message has been transmitted and exceedingly interesting apparatus is known as they call distributing B board which is used when calls for dial telephones are received from non dial telephones in completing the call the operator depresses numbered key a correspond to the number water an entirely different method had to be developed for completing calls when the situation is reversed that is when a dial subscriber wants to reach an on dial subscriber the number that was dialed appears in illuminated figures before the operator in the manual office who then completes the call here is one of the latest and most unusual developments a teletypewriter switchboard where connections are made so that written messages can pass back and forth between teletype riders just as conversations flow between telephones at this port however there's no spoken number please teletypewriter users communicate with the operator in writing the desired number appearing before her on a tape and she communicates with other teletypewriter switchboards in the same way their written word not the spoken word is what passes over the wires 50 years have made a vast difference in the mechanisms for switching one telephone line to another and the operating rooms have reflected many other changes too for millions of young women have sat before the nation's switchboards as two hundred thousand sits before them today the telephone family album has preserved for us the changing mode in operators equipment and in operators adornment as well it is a changing America that these portraits reflect but though the fashions in both equipments and adornments have changed with the years there's one fashion that is not changed a fashion of loyalty that is marked these public servants ever since switchboards became their charge the spirit that has become a tradition that has been supremely demonstrated so very many times that women have in the fullest measure surely these Weaver's of speech are part of the pageant's of America's history you'll recognize the newest portrait in the album for it is a speaking likeness thank you a composite likeness of the hundreds of thousands alert devoted true who serve us all at the switchboards of the naked [Music] you

Channel: AT&T Tech Channel

Views: 215,457

Rating: 4.9183369 out of 5

Keywords: AT&T, Tech, Channel, Archives, History, Technology, Telephone, Switchboard, Operator, Bonus, Edition, 1930s

Id: xJ1fKFqt7qU

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 17 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/nikomo]

I like these oldy-timey-wimey videos.

You should check out Crystals Go To War, if you haven't seen it.

[u/mynameisalso]

I love these at&t videos from what was bell labs.

[u/HamburgerDude]

While not really technical there isn't really a subreddit for vintage electronics (there ought to be) so I figured it would be okay to post here...still really interesting regardless!