The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-01-14

Boston, Jan. 13.-To the hustling American business man who lifts the receiver from his desk telephone and closes $20,000 deal in a city 500 miles away. without moving from his chair, and in the space of scarcely five min- ute's time, the long distance telephone Is one of the marvels of the twentieth century. As a matter of fact, there is no more remarkable industry than that which, combining mechanical perfec- tion with human skill, enables us to speak with each other from place to place, even though mountains, rivers and great cities intervene.
 Talking halfway across the conti- nent is as easy for the telephone user as chatting with a neighbor around the corner, but the means he employs in the two cases are quite different. An interurban conversation, even be- tween places that are connected by di- rect wires, may require dozen oper- ators and six or eight switchboards. When the cities are too far separated to have direct connection, and inter- mediate switching stations are called on to build up'' a circuit for you, the number of people and amount of ap- paratus required are, naturally, much larger.
 Every time you call up anybody by long distance" two plants and or ganizations are engaged at both ends of the line. The long distance service which welds into one great working whole the affiliated lines of the Bell system all over the country has it's own equipment entirely apart from that of local companies. In small ex- changes sections of the switchboard are set apart for its exclusive use; larger offices have special switch boards for toll operators, frequently in quarters by themselves; where there is sufficient business. long distance has it's own separate establishment.
 The busiest long distance wires in the world. among those of consider able length, are the ones over which this city and New York talk with each other between 500 and 300 times every twentv-four hours. There are more conversations over the New York-Phil- adelphia line-very many more; but that is only ninety miles long. There are conversations over much greater distances, too, with Washington, Chi cago. St. Louis, Omaha and many oth- CT of the 33,000 and odd communities the Bell system touches; but these are, naturally, fewer in number. Still, the New York business is only a part of the traffic of the long distance office l here. through which also pass, daily, | upwards of a thousand conversations with Providence, the capital or the | neighboring State of Rhode Island, to | say nothing of the scores of other out l of-town messages.
 1 Suppose you are staying in Boston and call up friend at his office in New York You simply take up the receiver of the instrument in your ho- tel room tell the attendant at the pri- vate branch exchange behind the clerks desk downstairs with which particular one of the 150,000 subscrib- | CTS in New York you want to talk to, and hang up the receiver again. If you know your friends telephone num- Der and Long Distance" does her work in the time which the engineers tests
 show to be the average. you Will get him within five minutes. If the num- her has to be looked up for you-ther'
 are directory operators in every long distance office who do nothing else or if your man is slow in answering
 the ringing of his bell, you will have | to wait so much longer, of course | What goes on in the mysterious pre- cincts of the long distance exchange while you are waiting Is an object les | son in business system" and efficiency.
 When you call New York, all the girl at the local central does Is to notify the long distance office. She has all she can attend to in handling the local bus
 mess, which brings her perhaps 200 calls an hour, and cannot take the time ! to go into the details of your needs when they extend beyond her territory So she gives your telephone number to the long distance receiving operator, as | she is called, who sits all day on a high stool behind a long, low switchboard
 noting on "order tickets" the numbers | of telephones from which people are calling for out-of-town connections
 Every switchboard girl in the local ex'
 change district. simply by depressing a little button with her thumb, can con- meet herself instantly with the receiv- Ing operator, who. having written the number of your telephone on the ticket" hands 1t to one of the ten or Q ] dozen recording operators who sit fac