The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-30
JUNCTION POINT OF TALK TRACKS Story of the Evolution of TeIe-
 phone Switchboard THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY First Crude Device for Connecting the Avenues of Speech contrasted
 With Intricate Apparatus
 Employed Today.
THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY

are the birthdays or the nrSt telepnOne
 line and the first switchboard which fall together about now. Thirty years ago in l April a single wire was strung from the
 factory in Boston where Bells instru-
 ments were made to the manufacturer 8
 residence in Somerville. two or three
 miles out in the suburbs. This was the
 first telephone line ever constructed-the l primal ancestor of the seven and half
 million miles of wire which now con-
 meet more than three million subscribers 1 stations" in the Bell system. At the be- l ginning of the summer of 1S7 soon after
 the erection of the first telephone line, l several wires radiating from a common | center were for the first time inter-con- nected by means of crude device which, l through evolution, has become the huge,
 intricate, highly perfected switchboard of l today.
 l Next to the telephone itself the switch l board is the most marvellous and the most
 necessary feature of the communicating l system. The work of the line builders 1 has been the most spectacular, no doubt
 but 1t would, after all. have counted for l but little were it not allied with the in
 ventive genius that devised the means
 of joining into one any two of the myriads of copper threads by which our voices | are carried far and near.
 Earliest Attempt.
 The earliest attempt at inter-connection
 on the general plan of the exchange as
 we understand it today was made in Bos- | ton in May, 1S77 There was then oper-
 ating in this city q company which pro 1 vided electrical burglar alarm service. It | had central station where the alarm 1 signals were located connected by wires
 with the premises of It's various sub nl,f faHt ho ore
 merchants. Arrangements were made for 1 the use of these lines and the central station as an experimental telephone eX- change. Telephones were attached to i've of the circuits-three In banks, one in the
 office of a firm of bankers and one in the
 office of the manufacturer of the instru- 1 ments-and repeatedly the wires were so
 connected in the alarm company's head
 quarters that conversations were carried
 on between the several subscribers l The crude apparatus used for making 1 these connections could hardly be called
 a swithboard, though it served, in It's
 small way, the same purpose as does the
 largest modern exchange. But It con-
 tained the germ of a great idea It start l ed experimentation as the result of which
 there was put into operation the following
 January a real telephone central office 1 Down in Bridgeport, Conn.,, there was l a private telegraph system, private tel l egraphy being a sort of social fad at that time and among the enthusiasts con
 nected with 1t was Thomas B. Doolittle, already the inventor of many ingenious
 devices, and soon to be the producer Of
 many more. Mir. Doolittle attached the l telephone Instrument to his society tele- graph wires, modified the switchboard l through which the lines had been con nected, so that it could be manipulated l by an operator, and attached signal bells 1 to all the circuits as a means of calling
 the operators attention There were twenty subscribers served by this pioneer
 switchboard
 Commercial Telephone.
 l In the same month that MT Doolittle put his switchboard into operation, the 1 first fully equipped commercial telephone
 exchange ever established for public or 1 general service was opened In New Haven,
 Conn It was success from the start 1 and no sooner was the success of the l New Haven undertaking apparent than other cities began installing central of l fees The possibilities thus given the tel l ephone increased it's popularity enormous l ly, in spite of the doubts and hesitat ton
 nearly everyone showed in the early days | June 90, 1877, there were 230 telephones in
 regular use-230 telephones in the whole
 world thirty years ago today where now l there are upwards of 7,000, GOO. Within l month after the number had more than
 trebled within two months it had been | multiplied by six and by the spring or l 1880 when the American Bell Telephone
 company, the first concern to attempt the l unifcation of the telephone system which 1 alone gives 1t it's full value took up the 1 business there were in operation some
 61, 900 transmitting and receiving tele- l phones. Meantime the central offices had
 multiplied wonderfully, and by March, ifa1 Ca tnu N1a14 |
 nine cities of more than 10000 inhabitants l and only one of more than 15000, without
 telephone exchange.
 Early Swtchboards.,
 The early switehboards were curious l contraptions beside the modern type of
 apparatus. They took several forms be- 1 fore the multiple board" used by the 1 Bell companies for nearly twenty years l now was worked out. At first they had
 signal bells of different tones, one at the 1 end of each subscribers circuit, the dis | tinctive tone indicating which line was ringing up." Then numbered drops were
 adopted, each line having metallic shut | ter in the front of the board which, when
 the subscriber turned the generator crank | at the side of his telephone instrument,
 fell so as to display the number of hls l line And finally came the "common bat
 tery, switchboard now in use in all large | cities and Delng auapleu to sHdller eA- 1 changes, in which the operators signal is 1 given by tiny incandescent electric 1 lamp The one place in the telephone sys- l tem where a bell never rings Is now the
 central office.
 Some of the early switchboards were
 big frames set along the side of the op- l erating room the connections being made
 by boys who ran from one point to an-
 other as the calls came in. Others were l like elongated tables, the switch sockets | being set into the flat top and the cords l for connecting them being suspended from 1 the ceiling. Apparatus of this sort was , clumsy and slow to operate, besides being l limited in the number of lines 1t could | United States a quarter of century ago, ] but 1t is a curious commentary on the
 lack of progressiveness in some directions of our transatlantic cousins that 1t IS still in use in some of the government
 operated exchanges of Europe. No doubt their backwardness in adopting Improve
 ments accounts for the small development
 of European telephone systems as com | pared with the development in this coun- l try.
 Automatic Systems.
 In the last few years there have been | devised so-called Automatic" telephone
 systems in which the subscriber does the
 work of making connections between his lines and the lines of other subscribers. | instead of that work being done by an opera tor in the central office In small communities. where, the expense of giving day-and might. Sunday-and-hol all 1 the-year round service by means Of ops
 orators is prohibitive, limited field of