St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-02-26

y
dozen times and receives no answer. he
is exceedingly apt to lose his temper
and euSS telephones generally, but this
does not alter the fact that they are eX-
ceedingly useful things to have around.
If some of the persons who are continu-
ally growing about poor service"
''lncompetent operators" and the like
would visit the exchange. they might
thereafter be less severe in their Ian
guage when mistake occurs or they
do not get the person they want as soon
as they think they should. Very few
OF the business men in Minneapolis
have ever been inside telephone eX-
change, for that matter. very few per-
sons not connected with the COM
pany have ever paid the place a
visit, thinking, perhaps, that there is
nothing of interest to be seen there.
But this is a great mistake, for any one.
especially person who is at all inter-
eSted in electrical plants and mechanical
workings, can find enough there to
nearly upset his brain, providing. how
ever, that said brain is not balanced
better than the ordinary mans.
Standing on the corner of Nicollet av-
enue and Second street and looking up
to the top of the city hall, where the
Minneapolis Telephone exchange is To-
Gated, one can see huge mass of wires
centering in several large boxes Just
outside of the window. There is a
big platform just below these
boxes, which are oblong in shape,
and stand erect. A small bridge
extends from this platform to the win
dow. furnishing means of crossing for
the lineman whose duty it is to attend
to the wires in these cable-boXes, as
they are called. Here in these boxes
are some 1,500 telephone wires, leading
to the different business houses and res
licences in the city. Each one of these
wires Is alone by itself outside of the
boxes, but on the inside it is bundled
with some 200 or 800 more of its fellows,
all covered with some insulating ma
terial and put into leaden pipe. These
pipes, containing the hundreds of wires,
run from the cable boxes into the tele-
phone room, under the floor, and come
up back of the testing board, where
each wire is again separated and has a
number of its own. The testing boards
an upright wall. full of small holes, and
covered with small hooks. Each hole
IS numbered to correspond with the
wire which connects with it. BY means
of this test board, which is, as its name
Indicates, board where all the wires
are tested, any trouble with the wires.
or any particular wire, is located by the
chlef operator, whose duty it is, among
other things, to attend to all complaints.
Suppose ii is reported to her that tele-
phone 1898 will not work. She at once
goes to the testing board, and. taking
her test wire, applies it to the hole num-
bered $40. If the trouble is somewhere
in the telephone Office it is known by
the drop numbered 70, at operator No.
SIS table, falling to drop, as
it would if the line was af-
fected outside of the Office. Should
the drop fall, as it generally does, one
of the trouble men is at once sent out to
follow up the line and see where the
difficulty lies. Should the drop not fall.
showing that the trouble is in the office,
1t IS hunted up very soon and at once
remedied.
From the test board the wires. again
enclosed in cables, run across the room
under the floor to space back of the