New-York tribune., 1919-08-28
Telephone Traffic

great board to which are connected all
the outgoing wires-three for each Of the
ton thousand phones in that central-for
she must be able to finish any connection
asked for. That means 10000 wires for
each board, besides the trunk, each with
it's little lamp connections And again there
are ninety boardsso there are 2,700,000
wires, not counting trunks, that start out
from that "B" board
One of the delicate little pieces of ap-
paratus that has to stand immense
amount Of work is the plug cable. This
is about ten feet long, and at each end
are the little copper, brass and nickel
plugs that make the connection. The cable
is about as big as a pencil, and the plug
tapers down from that to the size of the
lead. Every time plug goes in it has
to make three connections, one for the sig
nails and two to talk over. The cable that
connects them also has to carry three
wires, and it has to be as flexible as piece
of string, for il is drawn out of its home
under the desk, twisted about, and dropped
back hundreds of times day. Modern in
vention has not yet made plug cable that
one in the city is tested daily, but it may
break within minute after the test They
all have to be replaced every three months,
and may fail the minute they are put in.
One more little detail-when switch
board is busy there is q perfect network
OF plug cables webbing across the switch
board in front OF the girl, sometimes as
many as thirty. Each plugged in at both
ends-making sixty strands. To help her
find the one she wants the cables are al
ternately colored red, green and gray
probably white originally, and the little
signal lamps are similarly colored, so that
when a green light shows the girl should
follow the corresponding green cord, and
take that down.
The manipulating of these plug cables
has to be done with almost incredible
swiftness. On the average, a girl will put
up connection every 1872 seconds Errors
are bound to occur. The best the company
has ever been able to do was to hold the
number down to 3.5 per cent-seven in two
hundred Now it is 60 per cent more
twelve in two hundred
Here are some of the causes for mistakes:
Wrong Number-Half of these are the
fault of the subscriber. When the mistake
is made by the operator it is never by the
"A )" girl who took the call-you can hear her
repeat the number over the trunk-but by
the "B" girl, who has picked the wrong plug
out Of the 10000 within arms reach. "A"
can fix it for you, but it is not her fault.
Wrong Central-This is "A" girls fault
fho b,,4+
the eighty eight on her relay multiple
Busy back (when the line is not busy
This again is usually "B" girls fault for
picking a wrong plug, and the operator you
get is not to blame. But it sometimes han
pens that all the trunk lines to the central
you called are in use and you get "busy-
pack even before ever reaching that CEN
trail
Don't Answer-This again is "B" girls
fault for picking the wrong plug.
Out of Order-The same
Broken Connecton-This may be the fault
OF either girl. She gets light showing
that green line has finished talking and
pulls green corded plug out. But there
may be half dozen green cords in use and
sometimes in the welter of crosswires she
makes mistake. Also sometimes in pulling
one plug another is caught in the tanele
and pulled by accident
Delay in Take Downs-When a board is
overloaded it often happens that calls are
coming in so fast that for several minutes
the girl will have not a second to spare and
SO may not take down the connection Won
have been using. The rule is that waiting
calls shall be made before the old connec-
tons broken.
OF course, the higher the speed the
greater the number of errors. When the
city suddenly gets nervous about sometime
and is phoning about for news, as in the
case OF a big fire or explosion, or the signing
OF peace, the service gets overloaded and
becomes worse