The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-09-27
Operation of Ric7m0nd's Automatic
Telephone Plant Very Interesting

In the spring of 1907 the Richmond
Home Telephone company commenc-
ed rebuilding it's open wire plant prior
to the installation of the modern
switchboard and it has now practical
ly an all cable plant. During the early
part of the spring 10000 duct feet
of underground conduit was installed
and all cables were pulled in shortly
after For the past seven years the
Home company had been giving serv-
ice with a Magnetic Board, but it had
outlived it's day of usefulness and the
company decided to install an up-to-
date switchboard. The Automatic
Electric company, Chicago, received
the contract to build an automatic
telephone exchange of the divided
board or sub-station system. All of
the sub-stations are absolutely fire
proof.
The main office is an elegant two
story concrete building of the Colon
al style of architecture. The first
floor contains the general offices OF
the company with the chief lnspec-
tors room and small workshop In
the rear. The large and spacious
switch room is located on the second
floor as also is the toll room and the
power room. Thus it will be seen
that the entire central office equip
ment is contained on one floor which
fact enables the attendant to have all
the apparatus under direct superVls-
ion. The three sub-statiOn buildings
are identical with one another in con-
struction, the inside dimensions being
IA feet square, and have an ultimate
capacity of 500 main lines. They are
g Irinly and q
and consist of one room with a small
brick enclosure for the battery. Fig.
| also shows the exact distance be-
tween the main Office and each of its
subs. Nearly all of the trunk cables
between Main and the sub-stations
are underground and that which is
aerial has been strung on concrete
poles, which are something new in
pole line construction; the concrete
head which carries the sub-station No
l trunk cable across the Whitewater
river bottom is an exceptionally fine
piece of work. This lead consists en-
tirely of so foot poles. All the con-
crete poles in Richmond were con-
structed Dy the American Concrete
Pole company. In laying out the Rich
mond plant the engineers aimed to To-
cate the sub-stationS in the outlying
residence section of the city in order
to realize the large saving in cable
construction to the Main office which
| this system makes possible. With this
end in view sub-station No l was To-
Gated on the West Side and two line
switch units (No. 5000 and 10000 were
/ installed in it to handle all traffic IN
that section; sub-station No. 2 was
| built on the North Side of the city
with one line switch unit installed
| (No. $4,000 and on the East Side sub
station No. 3 is located with two
line switch units (NO. $500 and No.
3700) installed. The main office is
situated in the central downtown dis
trict and contains apparatus for serv-
ing subscribers located on the South
Here is also found the equipment
which operates in conjunction with
the sub-station apparatus.
By the term line switch unit" is
meant a complete one hundred line
switchboard. A line switch unit con-
sists of one hundred so-called Zine
switches" and ten connector switch
| es These line switches correspond to
the line relays of a manual switch
| board and further contain a simple
| steD-by-step device so arranged as to
automatically select the first non
| busy trunk of the ten outgoing trunk
i lines leading from each group OF 100
to the main office; the ten incoming
trunks to the unit terminate in the ten
so-called "connector syitches," which
are mounted around the base of the
switch board These "connector
switches" are used to handle all in.
coming calls to the one hundred sub
scribers terminating on each unit.
Only twenty-five pair are neces
sary between each line switch unit OF
one hundred subscribers and the main
office switchboard, thereby making
an actual saving of IS per cent in the
cable construction from the outlking
districts to the main office.
In addition to the line switch units
there is also installed in each sub-sta
ton a small As volt Chloride Accumu
lator Storage Battery, one No. 1C
Cooks Cross Connecting Frame and a
Supervisory Power Panel The three
sub-station batteries are charged
from the main Office over the regular
incoming trunks so that no extra
charging circuits are needed for this
purpose. The busy test and ringing
current is also fed out to the SubSta
tons from the main office.
Since there are no attendants or
duty at the sub-stations a very in
genious supervisory and tell-tale cir
cult was installed between each sub
station and the main office in order
that the switchboard man at main of
flee would have complete supervision
over each sub, The circuit consists
of only one wire per substation and is
wired in such a way that the blowing
of q fuse or heat coils or in fact any
irregularity of the mechanism viii