New-York tribune., 1919-12-07

uttQSItakeI was OOIu tIIc
idea upon which is founded
the automatic telephone switchboard.
To-day this system is in successful
operation in a hundred and fifty
cities, towns and villages in most
of the civilized countries of the
world, and next year it will be
inaugurated in the worlds greatest
city-New York.
He was crazy, this Chicago under
taker named Strowger-there can be
no doubt of that. What sane man
Of his calling would have conceived
the idea that the girls in the tele-
rhone exchange had formed con-
spiracy to divert from him business
coming over the telephone? Yet it
was this delusion which drove him to
contrive a device which would elimi-
nate the girls, who, he believed, were
robbing him of his business. With
such rough material as he had at
hand, including nails driven into an
old plank, he built model which
would actually operate.
Stronger died in an asylum, driv-
en- into madness by what became in
him an uncomfortable obsession, but
he had given to the world an in
vention destined to revolutionize the
telephone practice of four continents.
Before the final breakdown Of all
the faculties of his unhappy mind
the Stronger Automatic Telephone
Company had been formed to carry
on the work. So 1t is that the
wonderfully complex mechanism of
to-day, which picks automatically
and unerringly the one of perhaps
ten thousand telephone subscribers
whose number you indicate, is but
the big brother Of that model Of
wood and nails made thirty years
ago by the luckless undertaken.
Last week the New York Tele-
phone Company announced that the
automatic telephone switchboard will
be used exclusively In it's three new
exchanges - Pennsylvania, Academy
and Canal, which will be opened
some time in the course Of the COM
ing year. To-day, in u medium-sized
room in the Grand Central Terminal,
there is in actual operation such q
switchboard, handling more than
$4,000 calls daily, through five
branch exchanges, and connecting
some 578 separate telephone instru-
ments. This is the private installa-
ton of the New York Central Rail-
road and has been in operation four
years.
Should you so through the cor
ridors Of the Grand Central to Room
4511 you would find what seems far
more like scientific laboratory than
telephone exchange. There is no
confusion, no baDble Of voices, only
the low hum of the motors and a
subdued clicking as the orderly little
switches obey the command Of some
hand, perhaps only thousand feet
from you, in one of the offices in the
Grand Central, perhaps in lonely
signal tower up the line at Harmon,
some thirty miles away. They are
uncanny, these rows Of little gray
instruments, all neatly clean and
polished in their long glass cases
things of steel and brass that seem
to have been given the power of
thought.
One electrical expert is all that is
required to keep this exchange in
working order. Every day he in.
! spects the apparatus and cleans OF
replaces such parts as may require
it. This care renders failure to func-
ton properly an almost negligible
factor. Not more than one failure to
get an immes,i late connection out OF
every 100000 calls has occurred in
the system, according to J. D. Hobbs,
chief inspector Of telephones. When
such a stoppage does happen an au-
dible signal is given in the exchange
room and red, green or white light