É muito interessante como as coisas aconteciam no modo analógico, imagina 20, 50 operadoras de patins em um andar, correndo de um lado para o outro, como era árduo esse trabalho, parabéns aos pioneiros, temos uma divida impagável com esses trabalhadores, pois sequer há como mensurar o valor social do trabalho que desempenham para a sociedade da época, congratulações a você herdeira.
I have contracted for the phone industry for 25 years and I also have seen many changes in equipment. When I first started almost all equipment and materials were made in the USA now it's China or some other foreign country.
The layoffs were great! And the dismantling of Bell Labs, another smart decision. But seriously, the monopoly had run its course and Moore's law won. God bless you, Mr. Shannon.
I was an Operator with Southwestern Bell Telephone from 1969-1974. I started in Kansas, transferred to Texas then to Missouri. The three changes in 5 years kept the monotony down. Later became a nurse and retired with 25 years service.
The start of my apprenticeship with 'Post-Office Telephones' (UK), was servicing manual boards in the operator-room. Some of the equipment was put in during the early 1930s. Made of solid brass, it never wore out. The only things that failed were the operator's cords and pulleys. There are still Main Distribution Frames in some London telephone exchanges that have hardwood terminal-blocks wired with cotton-covered wire! They still work though and the smell and sounds of an old exchange is something that stays with you forever.
My mom was an operator in the 1950s for Southwestern Bell, then worked switchboards at Montgomery Wards then at Sears (she was head operator there for some years) in the 60's and possibly early 70's. She worked what some call "cord boards". I learned to work the one she worked at one place she worked. I then was able to work the switchboard at a high school I attended that had a board that was from the 40s. I used to relieve the operators at several places I worked but by the mid and late 70s, everyone had gone to the Demension system which was wonderful. No more cords and switches, it was all buttons and would fit on a desk with ease for an entire building of telephones, be it an office or hospital. It was fun and I didn't have to do it for entire shifts,, but male operators are apparently rare. Some people disconnected when a male answered assuming they had an incorrect number.
My great-aunt was an operator in a small town... she WAS the operator. She NEVER spilled on what she knew, which was "everything". I, on the other hand, talk too much. She was a PURE class-act and kept Wann, OK connected for years.
My older sister was a long distance operator for Southern Bell in the late 50s. She would come home with some hilarious stories, mostly about how callers from other parts of the country tried to pronounce some of the Indian-based town names found down here in Alabama! "Sylacauga" was the most memorable one!
To those who are curious, the dial office shown in the film at 9:40 was the Western Electric Panel switch. It was the first automatic switch developed by the Bell System and installed mostly in large cities starting in the 1920s. The Connections Museum of Seattle, WA currently operates the last functioning Panel switch in the world and has a few videos about it on RUclips for the even more curious.
Before this, another form of automatic switching, known as the step-by-step system, using direct dial impulses from callers to connect to the number being called. manufacturer was the Automatic Electric Company. Its use was in moderately large to rural cities and towns. First such switch was installed on the Bell System in Norfork, Virginia, in 1919.From then on, it was used on both Bell and non-Bell telephone exchanges.Try the Connections Museum of Seattle, WA, as these, like the panel system, are no longer operational.
Saw a really old time switchboard in Hoboken New Jersey hotel. Worked as an operator in South Dakota on the original drop down (magneto) boards (for a town and had several lines (farms) on each line. During electrical storms we operators would get "bit" by a small shock sometimes and all the lines would drop at the time. Then worked 5500 boards for Morristown New Jersey (pbx) 50 Jack's to a position. Also Pacific Bell information operator in the 1960's (madly thumbing thru a telephone book for each call). I got to love Motorola equipment when we finally got to own our own headsets. 😊
Thank you for posting this piece of history. My husband was a telecommunications engineer and worked on PBX systems. He even installed multiple line phones in our house which are still in use. This is history to be treasured.
I used to punch phone lines internally at a large insurance company before we went to voip. It's crazy to think at every punch down, there used to be a person plugging in a wire temporarily.
I can't believe how fast technology has evolved, from a room of workers connecting few hundreds of calls to a small circuit board in a tiny box that can handle millions of calls across continents without any human intervention!
@@mikeure1528 I feel like everything will be like that. I mean electricity has only been around for 120 years it hasn’t even been around that long and look
I'll always love how the teletypewriter concept was the progenitor of the very way we all are getting to watch this video - the internet. in slow but steady stages the concept of non-voice information going over voice lines eventually gave us this....
Does anyone remember the "emergency cut-in". You have to call someone about an emergency but the line on the other end is busy so you could ask the operator to interrupt the busy line and announce that so and so is trying to reach you about an emergency.
You could also ask the Operator to check if a line was in actual use if it had been busy for a long time. This was one way to report trouble with a line.
@@Zandanga you could also dial 0 and ask operator to call you back to verify that the phone was working and then when it rings you yelled "I got it" then answer it and pretend a friend needed something just to get out of the house and usually do something you shouldn't lol
@@thegraintruckguy4345 Hah! Do you remember party lines? My cousins in East Texas used to have lots of fun messing with their neighbors on the party line back in the late 50s and 60s.
@@Zandanga I don't personally remember them, the town that I lived close to had a 567 prefix and I remember that you only had to dial the 7 and the next four digits to make it work though
When I was a young girl in the 1960s, my dad went to have a hernia operation at Franklin Blvd hospital in Chicago. I went in and out of the waiting room with my mom, and there was a room with ladies connecting calls with plugs into switchboards. I had a small transistor radio with a little earphone that my mom bought me. I told her, I can plug the earphone into the earphone jack the same way that the operators plug the plugs into the switchboard.
at&t creates interesting history vids, history channel creates interesting storage bidding vids, music television creates interesting life of pregnant teens.
I’m 56 and when young I NEVER looked up a number in the paper phone directory...I just called “Information”. I remember when they changed the name of that to be “Directory Assistance” and then started charging for it.
My Mom's entire side of the family started their careers with the phone company working in information. I remember that change when I was a kid and being told to not call it anymore because we'd get charged. There was an exception though. You could call it for free from a payphone because they expected you were going to hang up and then pay to call the number they just gave you. That ended shortly after they got the ability to connect your call for you a few years later.
Makes you realize that the mechanisms involved in the ability to actually make a phone call takes much more than just a telephone. Who came up with the designs, concepts, and construction of all the related equipment ? Who came up with the switchboard? It's like electric distribution, Nicolai Tesla was the genius in designing the equipment and components in order to enable the distribution of electricity.
I remember as a young boy I was watching the demolition of the old switchboards being tossed out the 2nd floor of the local telephone company in order to replace the rotary dial equipment. This was back in the 50's. Now the telephone office still stands but is empty. "Time Changes Things".
When I was young, during the 60's and 70's, dialing O got a human voice. During the 70's we had party line, there were several others on the same line. We each had a certain ring to let us know the call was for us. Some times we had to wait tell someone finished their call before we call dial a number. Always worried when making a private call, as others on the party line could listen in.
My grandparents said the same thing, they lived in the country outside of a tiny Town, said on a Saturday night a bunch of people on the party line would all sit and yak in the phone for fun, they knew who was getting the call by the ring, shorts and longs and all kinds of unique stuff, lots of eavesdropping I'm sure
When I was young, right up until I believe the early 90's, you could get a real operator by pressing zero, but also a real human being for information (411). Now, not only do you have to deal with the annoying automated system, but many people contend with ads before you can ask for a number. Total BS.
Back in 70, I was in the Army, while in Vietnam, I operated a switchboard for a Brigade Headquarters. It was a boring job at night and ran us ragged during the day, I was glad to transfer to teletype so I could have a bit of time for relaxation.
Anna Ferrara Basically, Yes. Technology changes,but concepts remain. I had a "kid" tell me he listens to Spotify on his smartphone RATHER than listening to the radio. LOL - What he doesn't consider: Streaming audio on a device that uses a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is still listening to the radio!
in downtown sacramento on the roof of the big att building...the old microwave long wire system still sits proudly..with its 4 huge waveguides ...i have always thaught they looked like huge lazyboy chairs lol
This makes me think of Sarah in the Andy Griffith show, where Mayberry had a switchboard instead of a dial system. Although I think there should have been a number of different operators at different times, instead of always Sarah.
At one time these operators were a specially trained housewife with a switchboard system set up in her house. Small towns would have had them that way back in the 20's-50's apppx. So, when they talk about Sarah on Andy Griffith, she was probably a housewife with a desk or table set up in the corner of the living room. I've seen quite a few when watching old black/white movies and tv shows.
My mother was a swtchboard operator in the 60s. My father was a maintenance man of these swithboards. That is where they met. He worked at Bell ITT, AT&T, Alcatel, B- catel and then on Schiphol airport at KLM Cargo to buil up the computer network and later he was responcable to keep that running. He was highly educated in electronics ans also made a home switchboard. This all.was here in the Netherlands.
My mother was an operator for New England Tell &Tel . At very young age she had taught me to use the switch board . It looks very complicated, but actually it was fun once I got the hang of it. That seems like so long ago, but I'm so glad I was part of that era .
I don't know... watch the AT&T archive 'The Life of a Telephone Operator in 1969' and you realize that 1. that might be a legitimate question and 2. Just how much the American Public has always sucked!
This seems far more impressive - if confusing - than just doing it electronically. All the stepped switches and plugging wires in all over the place seems like more of a technological feat.
When the telephone was first invented there was no switching at all. you had to order a pair that only talked to each other; more of a simple intercom system. Manual switching and interconnection came later. When a network or town outgrew its switchboards, then it was automated. Later, local networks were interconnected with each other for long distance calling capability. It's a great example of how one invention spurs another in a kind of evolution. No one envisioned the entire system from the beginning.
The boards we had would close the eye on the circuit when the call was finished. We also had a check switch so we could listen in without clicking on the receivers of the users and it muted our microphone so they could not hear us. In the Army, we had to ask before removing the plug, like "are you working? are you working? BREAKING DOWN! then pull the plug.
From the movie "Office Space" - "Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment" "Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment" "Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment" "Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment" Multiply something like this by 25 women in the same room, times 24 hours a day. Now these CO's are halls of silence with a few blinking lights here and there. No more live operators or "Number, please". Very creepy, especially at night, and the lower the floor, the creepier.
teletype has short hand, TTY is the initials,. ham radio allows for such facilities, and i've heard such data bursts on the HF bands too,. it'd be kinda neat to start a service like that using ham freqs where you have a central operator, who then connects your calls via tty, like the phone companies use to do lol. bery interesting video though. i didnt know tty for the telephone existed as far back as the manual switchboard.
I am of an age where I remember the Bell Telephone building on Cass Ave. in Downtown Detroit. When the shift of operators changed at midnight, there was a row of taxicabs waiting to take the operators home. Bell paid for the ladies transportation. Somehow, I doubt if AT&T pays for anyones cab fare these days. AT&T offered free services such as the weather forecast, available by dialing WEbster 2-1212. The correct time could be had by dialing GR 2-1212. Directory assistance was also free, but with the advent of other providers and then cellular phones, the Detroit phone directory shrunk to the size of a J.C. Whitney catalogue, then disappeared. When I tell young people that I have always been listed in the public phone directory, they think me foolish for making my phone number available to all or ask, “What’s a phone book?”
I understand that each operator only answered a selection of incoming lines/subscribers, but how were they able to connect that group of subscribers to ANY other subscriber? Was the call relayed to an operator at a part of the switchboard where that particular subscriber was wired?
Not sure if the person that runs this page will see this or not. But; does anyone know how specifically they billed for long distance calls back then? I'm assuming in the very late 60's or early 70's is when it became somewhat computer automated. Especially with the AT&T Development of Linux. I would like to hear an answer from the beginning to around the 60's/70's. If I had to guess, there was some sort of a timer and a card that the operator wrote everything down on. I would think if she connected the long distance call, then she was responsible for keeping up with the billing on a card and put the start time and the end time and passed off the card to a supervisor. But again, that's just a wild guess.
Retired from ATT a year ago, frustrated and tired the company just would not replace defective lines. Not the company of old that took care of their customers.
Working a full shift on one of these cord boards looks exhausting. I worked in a large call center with no sound proofing between the operators. It often was so loud that I couldn't hear myself think. I took roughly 200 calls a day. These gals look like they're each taking much more than that. I left this job in 1996 and still can't stand hearing a ringing phone.
They would just plug in an offhook tone into the jack that was the number offhook. The circuit would latch onto the phone loop and auto release when it was hung up. When step by step switches were put in, an offhook line would reduce the traffic capacity by hogging a selector. It was routine for staff during slack moments to plug the offhook tone into the selector to clear the "path hog". The early analog common control switches, and this generation of digital switches solved that problem by ignoring the offhook after a timeout of the automatic offhook tone application.
In hospitals when a patient can’t speak english, there is a number hospitals can subscribe to that allows staff to call for a translator. And it’s maybe the only option unless the hospital has a system of volunteers to use. I’m retired but I’ve used this in big centers in different states. Known as AT&T Language Line.
The ladies who sat at the switchboard and said "Number Please" were employees of the "Traffic" department. The character of Ernestine the Operator was only half a joke!
Que interessante como de forma analógica, tudo acontecia, claro que com custos elevadíssimos, e sem universalização dos serviços, pois o aparato para se ter um assinante conectado a central telefônica era imenso, parabéns aos pioneiros.
Imagine living in a time where audio leveling exists. Heads up, the film reel is quite a bit quieter than the guy talking at the beginning. If you're like me and you turn the volume up to hear the reel, turn it down before the next video starts or you might need to get your ears checked.
1:01 The second switchboard shown was withdrawn from service after 55 years. Holy shit, that would be the equivalent of a 1966 device being in use TODAY......Looks at my 1959 GE fridge in the basement.....😳😮🤷♀️
For decades, we were used to the 0-9 key layout of calculators. Then telephone operators had to get used to key layouts that were two rows! Then some nut invented the touch telephone that had a key layout of a familiar calculator, except upside down! Why??
Joshua Sidell Yes, The "telephone" layout was designed to emulate the rotary dial. (lower numbers on top ). One needs to remember that the average person was immensely more familiar with the rotary dial telephone than they were with calculators (or even adding machines,for that matter). in the 50s and 60s. Even the "qwerty" keyboard was more familiar to "civilians" than the "calculator" layout. It wasn't until the middle 70s that inexpensive calculators became available and introduced the masses to the "calculator" layout.
Joshua Sidell I wasn't disputing anything of what you said, I was just pointing out the 1950s-60s consumer perspective and how it influenced Ma Bell's design consideration.
Joshua Sidell Yes, that's a "thing" especially among us "older" folks who are used to "telephone" format, It still "hangs me up" (pun intended!) when I use the numeric keypad on the PC!
Does the standard of Female Telephone Operators have to do with the Speaking Registers of Women vs Men? I. e. Higher (Soprano-Alto Registered) voices sound more clear? Even on Current equipment I have been accused of "Mumbling."
If I remember correctly, another reason women were preferred as operators was due to their perceived greater manual dexterity. Women on average have smaller hands than men, so they were thought to be more capable of dealing with the densely packed switchboards. However, it probably did have a lot more to do with being able to pay women a lot less than men.
The first operators were young "monkey boys", who could climb up and down the huge switchboards in large cities. Problem was they were quite rambunctious and salty to the callers, as you might imagine. When the smaller plugboards came about, they experimented with young ladies, who were much more courteous and compliant employees.
My grandmother was an operator during the 1920's and 30's in Chicago. The switchboard was so large the operators wore roller skates to get around.
É muito interessante como as coisas aconteciam no modo analógico, imagina 20, 50 operadoras de patins em um andar, correndo de um lado para o outro, como era árduo esse trabalho, parabéns aos pioneiros, temos uma divida impagável com esses trabalhadores, pois sequer há como mensurar o valor social do trabalho que desempenham para a sociedade da época, congratulações a você herdeira.
I really appreciate that these archived films are uploaded for all of us to enjoy.
He answers the phone just like me.. "hello, what do you want"!!
must imagine it was the only way to get his point across on those crappy pre-vaccume tube, pre-semiconductor of any kind days....
"Explain wave particle duality!"
That's what I say to scammers before I call them out!!!
@@PointyTailofSatan I'm not allowed to discuss that at the dinner table. Too many arguments. Sometimes I wish we could see radio waves.
I include (the hell) between what and do.
Retired from AT&T after 30 years. I saw many changes from 1981 to 2011!
@@peterjszerszen correct
I have contracted for the phone industry for 25 years and I also have seen many changes in equipment.
When I first started almost all equipment and materials were made in the USA now it's China or some other foreign country.
@@garymckee8857 - so much easier to eavesdrop on conversation with PRC gear.
The layoffs were great! And the dismantling of Bell Labs, another smart decision. But seriously, the monopoly had run its course and Moore's law won. God bless you, Mr. Shannon.
@@workingtheworld68 you are correct firewalls are manufactured in 🇨🇳
I was an Operator with Southwestern Bell Telephone from 1969-1974. I started in Kansas, transferred to Texas then to Missouri. The three changes in 5 years kept the monotony down. Later became a nurse and retired with 25 years service.
Lovely 💙
The start of my apprenticeship with 'Post-Office Telephones' (UK), was servicing manual boards in the operator-room. Some of the equipment was put in during the early 1930s. Made of solid brass, it never wore out. The only things that failed were the operator's cords and pulleys. There are still Main Distribution Frames in some London telephone exchanges that have hardwood terminal-blocks wired with cotton-covered wire! They still work though and the smell and sounds of an old exchange is something that stays with you forever.
Plenty brass polish, many hours cleaning those brass plugs!
My mom was an operator in the 1950s for Southwestern Bell, then worked switchboards at Montgomery Wards then at Sears (she was head operator there for some years) in the 60's and possibly early 70's. She worked what some call "cord boards". I learned to work the one she worked at one place she worked. I then was able to work the switchboard at a high school I attended that had a board that was from the 40s. I used to relieve the operators at several places I worked but by the mid and late 70s, everyone had gone to the Demension system which was wonderful. No more cords and switches, it was all buttons and would fit on a desk with ease for an entire building of telephones, be it an office or hospital. It was fun and I didn't have to do it for entire shifts,, but male operators are apparently rare. Some people disconnected when a male answered assuming they had an incorrect number.
Oh how interesting!
Thanks for sharing. It made my day!
My great-aunt was an operator in a small town... she WAS the operator. She NEVER spilled on what she knew, which was "everything". I, on the other hand, talk too much.
She was a PURE class-act and kept Wann, OK connected for years.
She should’ve wrote a book on all the gossip she overheard. I would’ve bought it
Oh the good old days:
"Hello. . . HELLO, what do you want?. . .ok"
@Jeffery Amherst now 100 random google and amazon employees listen in... when you are not even calling anyone. And it's pricey.
A guy I knew years ago would answer the phone with "What's your problem..."
Yanks were never civilized nation... Even in 2019
I remember when we used to call the operator for the correct time.
My older sister was a long distance operator for Southern Bell in the late 50s. She would come home with some hilarious stories, mostly about how callers from other parts of the country tried to pronounce some of the Indian-based town names found down here in Alabama! "Sylacauga" was the most memorable one!
To those who are curious, the dial office shown in the film at 9:40 was the Western Electric Panel switch. It was the first automatic switch developed by the Bell System and installed mostly in large cities starting in the 1920s. The Connections Museum of Seattle, WA currently operates the last functioning Panel switch in the world and has a few videos about it on RUclips for the even more curious.
Before this, another form of automatic switching, known as the step-by-step system, using direct dial impulses from callers to connect to the number being called. manufacturer was the Automatic Electric Company. Its use was in moderately large to rural cities and towns. First such switch was installed on the Bell System in Norfork, Virginia, in 1919.From then on, it was used on both Bell and non-Bell telephone exchanges.Try the Connections Museum of Seattle, WA, as these, like the panel system, are no longer operational.
Saw a really old time switchboard in Hoboken New Jersey hotel. Worked as an operator in South Dakota on the original drop down (magneto) boards (for a town and had several lines (farms) on each line. During electrical storms we operators would get "bit" by a small shock sometimes and all the lines would drop at the time. Then worked 5500 boards for Morristown New Jersey (pbx) 50 Jack's to a position. Also Pacific Bell information operator in the 1960's (madly thumbing thru a telephone book for each call). I got to love Motorola equipment when we finally got to own our own headsets. 😊
The company that gave us 8 nobel prize winners. Thanks
Thank you for posting this piece of history. My husband was a telecommunications engineer and worked on PBX systems. He even installed multiple line phones in our house which are still in use. This is history to be treasured.
I used to punch phone lines internally at a large insurance company before we went to voip. It's crazy to think at every punch down, there used to be a person plugging in a wire temporarily.
I can't believe how fast technology has evolved, from a room of workers connecting few hundreds of calls to a small circuit board in a tiny box that can handle millions of calls across continents without any human intervention!
what if that rate of change continues, not just for completing calls, transmitting data, but for things we wouldn't understand at this time.
Heck and the phones are wireless now!
@@mikeure1528 I feel like everything will be like that. I mean electricity has only been around for 120 years it hasn’t even been around that long and look
@@RANS87IROCZ and MORE THAN PHONES
@@kathleenking47 right, crazy how it all works to me
My great grandmother, grandmother, and great aunt were telephone operators in the 30s and 40s.
Mister Grandpa's Bakery that’s great
I was a telephone operator in the 1920's
I'll always love how the teletypewriter concept was the progenitor of the very way we all are getting to watch this video - the internet. in slow but steady stages the concept of non-voice information going over voice lines eventually gave us this....
In the 60s we had a teletype in our AAA contract station at our tow company in Van Nuys. Van Nuys Club Service just off of Sepulvida Bl.
I love these 70's AT&T videos❤❤❤❤❤
Does anyone remember the "emergency cut-in". You have to call someone about an emergency but the line on the other end is busy so you could ask the operator to interrupt the busy line and announce that so and so is trying to reach you about an emergency.
Yes I remember. My grandmother told me about it in the 1990s.
You could also ask the Operator to check if a line was in actual use if it had been busy for a long time. This was one way to report trouble with a line.
@@Zandanga you could also dial 0 and ask operator to call you back to verify that the phone was working and then when it rings you yelled "I got it" then answer it and pretend a friend needed something just to get out of the house and usually do something you shouldn't lol
@@thegraintruckguy4345 Hah! Do you remember party lines? My cousins in East Texas used to have lots of fun messing with their neighbors on the party line back in the late 50s and 60s.
@@Zandanga I don't personally remember them, the town that I lived close to had a 567 prefix and I remember that you only had to dial the 7 and the next four digits to make it work though
I love how the insulate in between tips, rings, and sleeves on the 3rd board are red. It's the little things.
3:28 "Hello, what do you want"
When I was a young girl in the 1960s, my dad went to have a hernia operation at Franklin Blvd hospital in Chicago. I went in and out of the waiting room with my mom, and there was a room with ladies connecting calls with plugs into switchboards. I had a small transistor radio with a little earphone that my mom bought me. I told her, I can plug the earphone into the earphone jack the same way that the operators plug the plugs into the switchboard.
I think the plugs and jacks are basically the same design, just smaller on modern devices.
Always wondered how those ones worked; the video made it so clear.
at&t creates interesting history vids, history channel creates interesting storage bidding vids, music television creates interesting life of pregnant teens.
I’m 56 and when young I NEVER looked up a number in the paper phone directory...I just called “Information”. I remember when they changed the name of that to be “Directory Assistance” and then started charging for it.
My Mom's entire side of the family started their careers with the phone company working in information. I remember that change when I was a kid and being told to not call it anymore because we'd get charged. There was an exception though. You could call it for free from a payphone because they expected you were going to hang up and then pay to call the number they just gave you. That ended shortly after they got the ability to connect your call for you a few years later.
Ours was 411.
This guy in the intro is a delight
I know, isn't he awful?
👍🏽🤣💯🙄
I worked at NET&T in1980 and the office still had a switch board with three operators .
Makes you realize that the mechanisms involved in the ability to actually make a phone call takes much more than just a telephone. Who came up with the designs, concepts, and construction of all the related equipment ? Who came up with the switchboard? It's like electric distribution, Nicolai Tesla was the genius in designing the equipment and components in order to enable the distribution of electricity.
My older sister (may she rest in peace) worked the switchboard in Indianapolis .
She was only18 years old. She was working for Indiana Bell.
!
I remember as a young boy I was watching the demolition of the old switchboards being tossed out the 2nd floor of the local telephone company in order to replace the rotary dial equipment. This was back in the 50's. Now the telephone office still stands but is empty.
"Time Changes Things".
So is AT&T going to switch to a new system anytime soon or still keep this one>
And the new phone books will be out soon.
@@garymckee8857 YEAH!!! I hope i am in it! (reference to The Jerk movie)
The Obama administration mandated this retro system as an economic fix to ""create more jobs."
@@MrAquinas1 Yes now that we have a revised edition Obama administration.
@@MrAquinas1 :
Sounds more like a Republican thing, like bringing back coal.
Amazing how far technology has come. This brings to mind what "Ernestine" said: "Why don't you use 2 dixie cups and a string! (snort-snort)"
Love Lilly tomlin. Glad she's finally out and still working.
Now add a switching office to it.
9:22: Can you imagine a hotel employing 24 operators just for that hotel?
I like the monty python-like animation of a hand that appears at 6:42
When I was young, during the 60's and 70's, dialing O got a human voice.
During the 70's we had party line, there were several others on the same line. We each had a certain ring to let us know the call was for us. Some times we had to wait tell someone finished their call before we call dial a number. Always worried when making a private call, as others on the party line could listen in.
My grandparents said the same thing, they lived in the country outside of a tiny Town, said on a Saturday night a bunch of people on the party line would all sit and yak in the phone for fun, they knew who was getting the call by the ring, shorts and longs and all kinds of unique stuff, lots of eavesdropping I'm sure
Indeed, we had a plunger on our first phone on a party line, we could leave the plunger down and listen, lift the plunger to talk.
How do you know they aren’t listening in on you now?
@@619guy202 They often made noises. Other times gossip.
@@cyclenut yes but I’m talking about now. How do you know Google, Amazon, and the government aren’t listening right now?
I had a flash back memory of Lilly Tomlin on Laugh In as a switch board operator.
Loved this! Thanks so much for posting it!
“Hello what do you want?”
I worked on tsps back around 1969 in Long Island events throughout New York State
I remember when we used to call the operator for the correct time.
There was also a direct number. I think is was like "something, something, 1212 or similar.
Att will give your phone records to any old one, if it suits them! Classy
When I was young, right up until I believe the early 90's, you could get a real operator by pressing zero, but also a real human being for information (411). Now, not only do you have to deal with the annoying automated system, but many people contend with ads before you can ask for a number. Total BS.
Larry Gall early 2000’s here!
I bet they played hell calling everyone about the extended warranty on their carriage plan.
And fraud involving their Soc Sec as well.
Teletype was the original text messaging.
Back in 70, I was in the Army, while in Vietnam, I operated a switchboard for a Brigade Headquarters. It was a boring job at night and ran us ragged during the day, I was glad to transfer to teletype so I could have a bit of time for relaxation.
Teletypewriters! The first text messages. :)
Anna Ferrara Basically, Yes. Technology changes,but concepts remain. I had a "kid" tell me he listens to Spotify on his smartphone RATHER than listening to the radio. LOL - What he doesn't consider: Streaming audio on a device that uses a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is still listening to the radio!
The first text messages were telegraphs by Morse Code in the 1840s.
@@haweater1555 well......telegraphs WERE code, sending , yep, CODE
not texts ,,,,=^..^=,,,,
i wonder what was the first EMOJI this :)
@@anotherkat4u Technically, that's an emoticon
in downtown sacramento on the roof of the big att building...the old microwave long wire system still sits proudly..with its 4 huge waveguides ...i have always thaught they looked like huge lazyboy chairs lol
The magneto board is amazing !
Geeze crazy to see these switching system.
This makes me think of Sarah in the Andy Griffith show, where Mayberry had a switchboard instead of a dial system. Although I think there should have been a number of different operators at different times, instead of always Sarah.
At one time these operators were a specially trained housewife with a switchboard system set up in her house. Small towns would have had them that way back in the 20's-50's apppx. So, when they talk about Sarah on Andy Griffith, she was probably a housewife with a desk or table set up in the corner of the living room. I've seen quite a few when watching old black/white movies and tv shows.
My mother was a swtchboard operator in the 60s. My father was a maintenance man of these swithboards. That is where they met. He worked at Bell ITT, AT&T, Alcatel, B- catel and then on Schiphol airport at KLM Cargo to buil up the computer network and later he was responcable to keep that running. He was highly educated in electronics ans also made a home switchboard. This all.was here in the Netherlands.
That looks complicated!
My mother was an operator for New England Tell &Tel . At very young age she had taught me to use the switch board . It looks very complicated, but actually it was fun once I got the hang of it. That seems like so long ago, but I'm so glad I was part of that era .
These people say “What do you want?” as if it is not already quite obvious. “Why else would I be on the line?”
I don't know... watch the AT&T archive 'The Life of a Telephone Operator in 1969' and you realize that 1. that might be a legitimate question and 2. Just how much the American Public has always sucked!
This seems far more impressive - if confusing - than just doing it electronically. All the stepped switches and plugging wires in all over the place seems like more of a technological feat.
When the telephone was first invented there was no switching at all. you had to order a pair that only talked to each other; more of a simple intercom system. Manual switching and interconnection came later. When a network or town outgrew its switchboards, then it was automated. Later, local networks were interconnected with each other for long distance calling capability. It's a great example of how one invention spurs another in a kind of evolution. No one envisioned the entire system from the beginning.
This is amazing
How does the operator know when the call is completed though, so they can unplug their patch cable?
The boards we had would close the eye on the circuit when the call was finished. We also had a check switch so we could listen in without clicking on the receivers of the users and it muted our microphone so they could not hear us. In the Army, we had to ask before removing the plug, like "are you working? are you working? BREAKING DOWN! then pull the plug.
that one at 3:15 would take forever to make prank calls. I would just give up and go tip over a cow or something
6:47 - Looks like one of Terry Gilliam's creations! 😆
My grandmother was a “Hello Girl” in the early 1900s.
In the late 1970’s, I used to work the switchboard at small hospital in rural New York state.
11:44 200,000 operators... You'd need 20x that many today!!
One of my aunt's was a switchboard operator in a hospital around 60 years ago.
Imagine being in a film that won't interest people until many decades later!!!
From the movie "Office Space" -
"Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment"
"Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment"
"Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment"
"Corporate Accounts Payable Nina speaking......just a moment"
Multiply something like this by 25 women in the same room, times 24 hours a day. Now these CO's are halls of silence with a few blinking lights
here and there. No more live operators or "Number, please". Very creepy, especially at night, and the lower the floor, the creepier.
teletype has short hand, TTY is the initials,. ham radio allows for such facilities, and i've heard such data bursts on the HF bands too,. it'd be kinda neat to start a service like that using ham freqs where you have a central operator, who then connects your calls via tty, like the phone companies use to do lol. bery interesting video though. i didnt know tty for the telephone existed as far back as the manual switchboard.
In central coast guard rail station somewhere in San Francisco the calls happens a lot of staffs had been talking on those switchboard telephones
Sorry mate but that makes no sense in english whatsoever.
I operated a cord board at the phone co. in 1973-4.
Nice little upper arm work out for the operators.
Great video, ex AT&T HF Radio Transmitter Tech.
Hello . I looking for some info about radiocommunication services made by ATT. Pokaż więcej Pokaż mniej
Pis sfałszował wybory
Hi Pis, send me your eMail addr. and we can discuss HF radio communications system. Walt
TKS Walt. My email is hf8v@interia.pl
Born in 1982... wish I was alive back then
The fact that 6:33 to 6:52 made me giggle just further proves the fact that im still a child
I am of an age where I remember the Bell Telephone building on Cass Ave. in Downtown Detroit. When the shift of operators changed at midnight, there was a row of taxicabs waiting to take the operators home. Bell paid for the ladies transportation. Somehow, I doubt if AT&T pays for anyones cab fare these days.
AT&T offered free services such as the weather forecast, available by dialing WEbster 2-1212. The correct time could be had by dialing GR 2-1212.
Directory assistance was also free, but with the advent of other providers and then cellular phones, the Detroit phone directory shrunk to the size of a J.C. Whitney catalogue, then disappeared.
When I tell young people that I have always been listed in the public phone directory, they think me foolish for making my phone number available to all or ask, “What’s a phone book?”
I understand that each operator only answered a selection of incoming lines/subscribers, but how were they able to connect that group of subscribers to ANY other subscriber? Was the call relayed to an operator at a part of the switchboard where that particular subscriber was wired?
i was hoping for iterations of the pbx. we had a toggle board which replaced the plug system.
Not sure if the person that runs this page will see this or not. But; does anyone know how specifically they billed for long distance calls back then? I'm assuming in the very late 60's or early 70's is when it became somewhat computer automated. Especially with the AT&T Development of Linux. I would like to hear an answer from the beginning to around the 60's/70's. If I had to guess, there was some sort of a timer and a card that the operator wrote everything down on. I would think if she connected the long distance call, then she was responsible for keeping up with the billing on a card and put the start time and the end time and passed off the card to a supervisor. But again, that's just a wild guess.
Fantastic
I thought this was quite advanced for this time.
How did the operator know when the call was complete and that the wire jumper can be disconnected?
Retired from ATT a year ago, frustrated and tired the company just would not replace defective lines. Not the company of old that took care of their customers.
Everyone knows about Bell and Watson, but who knew that they brought it all to market in less than a year. 1877!
Working a full shift on one of these cord boards looks exhausting. I worked in a large call center with no sound proofing between the operators. It often was so loud that I couldn't hear myself think. I took roughly 200 calls a day. These gals look like they're each taking much more than that. I left this job in 1996 and still can't stand hearing a ringing phone.
What if one line wanted to talk to a line at the far end of the room? Do they have to run a Jack line all the way across the room?
Phenomenal we all know it's only a switch away to go back to commonsense 101 family let's roll👌🇺🇸🦅
Very interesting enjoyed it. Thank you
im gunna take the latest iphone back to the 1800s then come back to now see how far well advance then
"Hello hello" guy was hot.
and how! though he has most certainly been a corpse for decades at this point and thus probably not worth looking up.
How do operators call numbers with the off hook tone when the certain number has left there phone off the hook? How does the off hook tone work?
They would just plug in an offhook tone into the jack that was the number offhook. The circuit would latch onto the phone loop and auto release when it was hung up. When step by step switches were put in, an offhook line would reduce the traffic capacity by hogging a selector. It was routine for staff during slack moments to plug the offhook tone into the selector to clear the "path hog". The early analog common control switches, and this generation of digital switches solved that problem by ignoring the offhook after a timeout of the automatic offhook tone application.
I'm old....can you even reach an 'operator' today??
You can, at least with AT&T.
and with today's cheap fibre transmission technology, they save money by having the operator be in a low wage country overseas.
Yes you can! I use them a lot at work for international calls. Especially when I can’t remember the dial-out code :)
More and more, the subscriber is the operator.
In hospitals when a patient can’t speak english, there is a number hospitals can subscribe to that allows staff to call for a translator. And it’s maybe the only option unless the hospital has a system of volunteers to use. I’m retired but I’ve used this in big centers in different states. Known as AT&T Language Line.
550 Maddison avenue from 1984 to 1986??? Only two years, huh?
The ladies who sat at the switchboard and said "Number Please" were employees of the "Traffic" department. The character of Ernestine the Operator was only half a joke!
Que interessante como de forma analógica, tudo acontecia, claro que com custos elevadíssimos, e sem universalização dos serviços, pois o aparato para se ter um assinante conectado a central telefônica era imenso, parabéns aos pioneiros.
Who else just got this in their recommended? 2019
Imagine living in a time where audio leveling exists. Heads up, the film reel is quite a bit quieter than the guy talking at the beginning. If you're like me and you turn the volume up to hear the reel, turn it down before the next video starts or you might need to get your ears checked.
1:01 The second switchboard shown was withdrawn from service after 55 years. Holy shit, that would be the equivalent of a 1966 device being in use TODAY......Looks at my 1959 GE fridge in the basement.....😳😮🤷♀️
I watched the entire video, but I didn't find myself wishing to talk to an operator, when I pick up the phone.
For decades, we were used to the 0-9 key layout of calculators. Then telephone operators had to get used to key layouts that were two rows! Then some nut invented the touch telephone that had a key layout of a familiar calculator, except upside down! Why??
Joshua Sidell Yes, The "telephone" layout was designed to emulate the rotary dial. (lower numbers on top ). One needs to remember that the average person was immensely more familiar with the rotary dial telephone than they were with calculators (or even adding machines,for that matter). in the 50s and 60s. Even the "qwerty" keyboard was more familiar to "civilians" than the "calculator" layout. It wasn't until the middle 70s that inexpensive calculators became available and introduced the masses to the "calculator" layout.
Joshua Sidell I wasn't disputing anything of what you said, I was just pointing out the 1950s-60s consumer perspective and how it influenced Ma Bell's design consideration.
Joshua Sidell Yes, that's a "thing" especially among us "older" folks who are used to "telephone" format, It still "hangs me up" (pun intended!) when I use the numeric keypad on the PC!
Does the standard of Female Telephone Operators have to do with the Speaking Registers of Women vs Men?
I. e. Higher (Soprano-Alto Registered) voices sound more clear?
Even on Current equipment I have been accused of "Mumbling."
My guess is that it was primarily related to the fact that they could get away with paying women less.
@@kcgunesq That Too.
If I remember correctly, another reason women were preferred as operators was due to their perceived greater manual dexterity. Women on average have smaller hands than men, so they were thought to be more capable of dealing with the densely packed switchboards. However, it probably did have a lot more to do with being able to pay women a lot less than men.
The first operators were young "monkey boys", who could climb up and down the huge switchboards in large cities. Problem was they were quite rambunctious and salty to the callers, as you might imagine. When the smaller plugboards came about, they experimented with young ladies, who were much more courteous and compliant employees.
Have her put them on RUclips, especially one can talk.
I’m a little confused. They could have built a switching system with vacuum tubes and electromagnetic relays. Why this insanity?
Evolution. Technology always starts with the easiest solution first, then improves. Why railroads? why didn't we just jump ahead to the Airbus A320?
Who's the funny looking skinny dude in the beginning wearing the Ma Bell logo in a tight, one-piece suit?