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History
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The first telephones in the 1870s were rented in pairs which could only talk to each other, but the example of a central exchange was soon found to be even more advantageous than in telegraphy. Small towns typically had the operator's switchboard installed in the operator's home so that she could answer calls on a 24 hour basis. In 1894, New England Telephone and Telegraph installed the first battery-operated switchboard on January 9 in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Early switchboards in large cities usually were mounted floor to ceiling in order to allow the operators to reach all the lines in the exchange. The operators were boys who would scoot up a ladder to connect to the higher jacks. Late in the 1890s this measure failed to keep up with the increasing number of lines, and Milo G. Kellogg devised the Divided Multiple Switchboard for operators to work together, with a team on the "A board" and another on the "B." These operators were almost always women until the mid-1960s when men were once again hired. Early "cord" switchboards were often referred to as "cordboards" by telephone company personnel. Conversion to Panel switch and other automated operations in big cities first eliminated the "B" operator and then, usually years later, the "A". Rural and suburban switchboards for the most part remained small and simple. In many cases, customers came to know their operator by name.
As telephone exchanges converted to automatic, or direct dial, service, switchboards remained in use for specialized purposes. Before the advent of direct-dialed long distance calls, a subscriber would need to contact the long-distance operator in order to place a call. In large cities, there was often a special number, such as 1-1-2, which would ring the long-distance operator directly . Elsewhere, the subscriber would ask the local operator to ring the long-distance operator.
When calling long distance, the customer often would not have the phone number available, so would simply give the name and city of the person desired. The long distance operator would plug into the trunk for the distant city, and the inward operator in the distant city would answer, obtain the number from the local information operator, and ring the call.
Later, with the advent of multi-frequency operator dialing, the operator would plug into a trunk line and dial the area code and operator code for the information operator in the distant city. If the customer knew the number, and the point was direct-dialable, the operator could dial the call. If the distant city did not have dialable numbers, the operator would dial the code for the inward operator, and ask her to ring the number.
After most phone subscribers had direct long-distance dialing, one type of operator served both the local and long distance functions. A customer might call to request a collect call, or help getting through on a number that did not ring or might be out of order, for instance. If the number was in a distant city, the operator would call the inward operator in the destination city, and ask her to try the number, or to test a line to see if it was busy or out of order. Cordboards for these purposes were replaced in the 1970s by TSPS and similar systems.
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