Telephone exchange

“ However, it should be borne in mind that by reason of the existence in the larger cities of local telegraph central offices or exchanges, operating on lines somewhat similar to the early telephone exchange, the probable usefulness of a telephone system should have appealed to many whose experience with an intercommunicating system might have enabled them to forecast the development of the telephone exchange system. ”

“ Twenty-three years ago the first telephone exchange in the world was established in the United States, and from that beginning has been built up the great system of exchanges, and the network of connecting lines over which conversation can be held between points over a thousand miles apart. ”

“ A telephone exchange devoted to the purely local uses of a private establishment such as a store, factory, or business office, is a private exchange. If, in addition to being used for such local communication, it serves also for communication with the subscribers of a city exchange, it becomes in effect a branch of the city exchange and, therefore, a private branch exchange. ”

“ It is the duty of the operator to obtain connections through the city exchange for the private branch subscriber, who merely asks for a certain connection and hangs up his receiver to await her call when she shall have obtained it. This saving of time of busy people by having the branch-exchange operator make their calls for them has one attending disadvantage, which is that the person in the city exchange who is called does not, when he answers his telephone, find the real party with whom he is to converse, but has to wait until that party responds to the private branch operator's call. ”

“ The Central Telephone Exchange is now prepared to wake up subscribers at any hour for threepence a call, and it is forming an "Early Risers' List." So many persons are anxious to take a rise out of the Telephone Service that the success of the innovation is assured. ”

“ In manual switchboards of early types, wherein the position of the subscriber's answering jack was fixed by his telephone number, the inequality of traffic became a serious problem. Most of the subscribers who first installed telephones when the exchange was small, retained their telephones and numbers; as their use of the telephone grew with their business, it was customary to find the positions answering the lower numbers much more busy than the positions answering the higher numbers, the latter belonging to later and usually less active business places. ”

“ The “call-wire” system has been used to some extent, but it is now obsolete. The feature of the system was the provision of special service circuits, termed call-wires, for purposes of communication between the subscribers and the exchange operators. Each subscriber was given the exclusive use of a circuit as in other systems, and shared a call-wire with a number of other subscribers. Each telephone set was equipped with a special key or switch by means of which the telephone could be transferred from an exclusive line to the call-wire at will. ”

“ Number portability.—The duty to provide, to the extent technically feasible, number portability in accordance with requirements prescribed by the Commission. `` (3) Dialing parity.—The duty to provide dialing parity to competing providers of telephone exchange service and telephone toll service, and the duty to permit all such providers to have nondiscriminatory access to telephone numbers, operator services, directory assistance, and directory listing, with no unreasonable dialing delays. ”

“ The invention of a telephone is a great blessing to mankind; it enables friends to talk to each other at a distance without the trouble of calling. [1] Sweethearts can exchange their sweet nothings, and even proposals of marriage have been made and accepted through the telephone. However, one is subjected to frequent annoyances from wrong connections at the Central Office, and sometimes grave errors are made. Once, through a serious blunder, or a mischievous joke, I lost a dinner in my Legation in Washington. ”

“ She is also taught the knack of concentration, so that she may carry the switchboard situation in her head, as a chess-player carries in his head the arrangement of the chess-men. And she is much more welcome at this strange school if she is young and has never worked in other trades, where less speed and vigilance are required.
No matter how many millions of dollars may be spent upon cables and switchboards, the quality of telephone service depends upon the girl at the exchange end of the wire. It is she who meets the public at every point. ”

“ In Japan one can sell a telephone privilege at a good price, its value being daily quoted on the Stock Exchange. Americans, by constantly using the telephone, have developed what may be called a sixth sense, which enables them to project their personalities over an almost unlimited area. In the United States the telephone has become the one all-prevailing method of communication. The European writes or telegraphs while the American more frequently telephones. In this country the telephone penetrates to places which even the mails never reach. ”

“ In the United States there are over a quarter of a million exchange subscribers, and ... these make use of the telephone to carry on 600,000,000 conversations annually. There is hardly a city or town of 5,000 inhabitants that has not its Telephone Exchange, and these are so knit together by connecting lines that intercommunication is constant." The number of telephones in use in the United States, on the 20th of December in each year since the first introduction, is given as follows ”

“ Wireless telephony, like wireless telegraphy, but to an even greater extent, is peculiarly suited for the conveyance of marine intelligence. Wireless telephony occupies a unique position in this regard-no operator is required. The additional expense of an operator is an objection to the wireless telegraph in many cases, and forbids its installation. Anybody can operate the wireless telephone. It is also much quicker-words can be spoken more rapidly than they can be put into Morse signals and translated. ”

“ Railways and steamships had begun this work of binding man to man by "nobler and cunninger methods." The telegraph and cable had gone still farther and put all civilized people within sight of each other, so that they could communicate by a sort of deaf and dumb alphabet. And then came the telephone, giving direct instantaneous communication and putting the people of each nation within hearing distance of each other. ”

“ Roughly speaking, there are now ten million telephones in all countries, employing two hundred and fifty thousand people, requiring twenty-one million miles of wire, representing a cost of fifteen hundred million dollars, and carrying fourteen thousand million conversations a year. All this, and yet the men who heard the first feeble cry of the infant telephone are still alive, and not by any means old.
No foreign country has reached the high American level of telephony. The United States has eight telephones per hundred of population, while no other country has one-half as many. ”

“ A great corporation, nerved at every point with telephone wires, may now pay fifty thousand dollars to the Bell Company, while at the same time a young Irish immigrant boy, just arrived in New York City, may offer five coppers and find at his disposal a fifty million dollar telephone system. ”

“ In this way, masked as competition, the nuisance and waste of duplication began in most American cities. The telephone business was still so young, it was so little appreciated even by the telephone officials and engineers, that the public regarded a second or a third telephone system in one city as quite a possible and desirable innovation. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART
Four wire-using businesses were already in the field when the telephone was born: the fire-alarm, burglar-alarm, telegraph, and messenger-boy service; and at first, as might have been expected, the humble little telephone was huddled in with these businesses as a sort of poor relation. To the general public, it was a mere scientific toy; but there were a few men, not many, in these wire-stringing trades, who saw a glimmering chance of creating a telephone business. ”

“ FIG. 153.—The aerial system of a transatlantic station.
The wireless telephone enables a passenger on board ship to communicate direct with his home by relaying the message over the line wires. By the same means the captain of a ship can call his home office and communicate with the owner of the vessel.
Telegraphs and telephones are the nerves of the world, carrying swift messages from its brain centers to its hands, annihilating distance in thought. All differences between men as individuals and people as nations can be traced to the lack of close contact. ”

“ To tell the doings of a wire chief, in the course of his ordinary week's work, would in itself make a lively book of adventures. Even a washerwoman, with one lone, non-electrical clothes-line of a hundred yards to operate, has often enough trouble with it. But the wire chiefs of the Bell telephone have charge of as much wire as would make TWO HUNDRED MILLION CLOTHES-LINES—ten apiece to every family in the United States ”

“ There are even now only four men who own as many as ten thousand shares of the stock of the central company. This Bell System stands as the life-work of unprivileged men, who are for the most part still alive and busy. With very few and trivial exceptions, every part of it was made in the United States. No other industrial organism of equal size owes foreign countries so little. Alike in its origin, its development, and its highest point of efficiency and expansion, the telephone is as essentially American as the Declaration of Independence or the monument on Bunker Hill. ”

“ He may establish a universal code, so that all persons of importance in the United States shall have call-numbers by which they may instantly be located, as books are in a library.
Some other young man may create a commercial department on wide lines, a work which telephone men have as yet been too specialized to do. Whoever does this will be a man of comprehensive brain. He will be as closely in touch with the average man as with the art of telephony. ”

“ And thus the larger truth about the telephone is that it is vastly more than a mere convenience. It is not to be classed with safety razors and piano players and fountain pens. It is nothing less than the high-speed tool of civilization, gearing up the whole mechanism to more effective social service. It is the symbol of national efficiency and cooperation.
All this the telephone is doing, at a total cost to the nation of probably $200,000,000 a year—no more than American farmers earn in ten days. ”

“ That the telephone is now doing most of all, in this binding together of all manner of men, is perhaps not too much to claim, when we remember that there are now in the United States seventy thousand holders of Bell telephone stock and ten million users of telephone service. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy is part of the established order of things. The wireless telephone is practical for limited distance, but is not a commercial rival of the telegraph. Great distances are claimed, but they are matters for proof and speculation.
There is no immediate possibility that wireless telephony will take the place of local exchanges. If the time ever does come that it in any way tends to supplant the line telephone for some uses, it is more than probable that each subscriber must have his own generating station and call up direct. ”

“ These telephone girls are the human part of a great communication machine. They are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern every minute. How many possible combinations there are with the five million telephones of the Bell System, or what unthinkable mileage of conversation, no one has ever dared to guess. But whoever has once seen the long line of white arms waving back and forth in front of the switchboard lights must feel that he has looked upon the very pulse of the city's life. ”

“ But because a way was found to couple the wireless telephone with the wire telephone, the new wonder has great possibilities as a supplement to our existing system. Before so very long it may be possible for an American business man sitting in his office to call up and converse with a friend on a liner crossing the Atlantic. ”

“ It has become so truly an organ of the social body that by telephone we now enter into contracts, give evidence, try lawsuits, make speeches, propose marriage, confer degrees, appeal to voters, and do almost everything else that is a matter of speech.
In stores and hotels this wire traffic has grown to an almost bewildering extent, as these are the places where many interests meet. The hundred largest hotels in New York City have twenty-one thousand telephones—nearly as many as the continent of Africa and more than the kingdom of Spain. In an average year they send six million messages. ”

“ Will railway receipts fall off? Will the taxi-cab wait in vain for a call? There is one certain thing the popularising of the telephone will effect—it will test the sincerity of our friend who protests that he is anxious to see us, and to be in our company. If this sentiment, as is often the case, arises merely out of a desire to hear himself talk, the man may simply use the telephone. ”