New-York tribune., 1919-08-28

ME- New York Telephone Company by
way of catching up with a million
excess calls daily is spending money
for construction at the rate Of a million
dollars a month. The cost of it's programme
will be s26,000,00O. 1t includes:
Six new central Offices, two each in Man
haitian, Brooklyn and The Bronx.
Additions to five other central Office
buildings.
Five complete new switchboards, four in
Manhattan and one in Queens.
Additions to thirteen other switchboards.
The laying of 255,966 miles of wire
enough to go ten times around the earth.
The complexty of telephone system is
almost beyond comprehension to layman.
Each telephone wire running into central is
triple--that is, there are three wires for
your phone, and there are 10000 phones
$4,000 wlres-for each central Each of
those sets of wires must be connected not
only with the hole into which central will
put connecting plug when you call up, but
with the lttle light her desk that viii!
tell her when you call. But this is only
the start Any one girl is likely to be over
loaded, SO the swtchboards are arranged in
banks, or teams of nine. and on the modern
board there are enough cross wires so that
your call will not only register for your own
operator but for all the other eight will
show light and will have plug hole so
that she can take care of YOU All this lust
to get the call to central
To A.
tlons. First is to reach the other central
Tor which the call has been made There
are eighty-eight centrals in New York now.
and the girl who handles your call is con-
nected by trunks" with each Of the eighty
eight. So few New York calls are made in
side the same central--never more than
twenty in hundred and sometimes as low
as two in a hundred-that the girl who re-
ceives the call never plugs you through to
your number, but relays the call over the
trunk wire" even inside her own central.
10 do this her hand moves to the left of
her desk, where there is machine like
typewriter keyboard, with a key for each
OF the other centrals While she is repeat
ing your number to you the operator is
already pressing a key to the central YOU
have asked for, and that key switches in q
kind of a private wire to the other central
Over that private wire your central gives
the number to the other central and the
other central gives back a mystic number
which tells your girl which trunk" to plug
your call in on.
While she is doing this the distant CEN
tral has already plugged in your number
and connected it with the trunk she has
designated, so that when your girl plugs
IN on that trunk your connection is COM
pleted. Then a machine starts ringing
the bell, and neither girl has anything to
do with it till the ringing has gone on
for five minutes when a signal will show
that the phone does not answer. If the
phone is answered a second little lamp
lights on both desks, and stays lit till the
phones Cor of them) are hung up
Come back a minute to the "a" desk. as
it is called, where the incoming calls are
handled. To make her connections with the
other centrals the "a" operator has to have
trunk lines running to each-a varvinc
number of trunks depending on the amount
of business that passes between the two
centrals. A Cortlandt operator. for in
stance, will have thirty trunks to Rector.
dozen to Plaza, but only two or three to
Kenmore. And these trunks must be con-
nected with each of the "a" boards in the
central. There are ninety such boards In
Cortlandt-each with its incoming wires.
its cross connections with the other boards
in the team, and the cross connected trunk
hnes-~a wilderness of wire multiplied by
ninety. And this is only for the first part
of the call.
Go now TO the "B" board, which handles
the outgoing calls. The operator here
never takes number from a subscriber,
put gets her work over the trunks from
heaven knows how many centrals. Before
her, IN addition to the incoming trunks, is