The Life of a Telephone Operator in 1969

[stan]

My

House phone
Ringer box below.
This was original phone to the house, however even though it has a dial, there was no dial tone til about 15 years later. The old number was 805J

 

[rp2813]

Stan, I had that exact same arrangement (1931 D-1 set with 1931 box) when I was serving as householder in a 1937 home back in the mid '80s.  I loved hearing the "brrrrinnng" sound from the bell box.   Upstairs in that same home I had a 1938 metal 302 model in the hallway on a 25' cord.

 

These days, that phone and box rig is in the guest bedroom.  I disabled the ringer for a couple of reasons:  I don't want to disturb guests, and the old ringers draw so much current that my '60s chime box in the den stops chiming.  I have three vintage phones that are set to ring in addition to the chime box.  Any more than that and the chime reverts to a loud clang.

 

[gyrafoam]

Stan

I remember when my father's desk had two of those.
They made great doorstops later on as they must have weighed 25 pounds.

 

[jamiel]

Michaelman, need to agree with Louis. What you're saying is true for the NANP (North American Numbering Plan), but not necessarily for the rest of the world. 0 for operator is common, but wasn't standard in smaller countries with less of a concept of "long distance" like the Netherlands. They certainly had a way to get an international operator (may have been "11" or "12" or ...). I've been in the phone business since 1992...one of the more interesting museums I've been to was the Telephone Museum in Stockholm...Ericsson is to Sweden as AT&T is to the US...very interesting to see the development at their museum (similar technological steps as the US had, but what we see as "exotic" was the norm for Ericsson...they did a much greater portion of their business overseas than AT&T (which didn't really operate overseas except for licensing their stuff to Canada...IT&T was the US company which was more engaged internationally.

 

[foraloysius]

Actually it was 0018. It was an information number for international telephone traffic. You could call it for an international telephone number. If you were able to call it yourself, you would put the phone down after you were given the number and call it yourself. If you would let them connect you to it, there was an extra charge. Calling to countries that you couldn't call yourself was more expensive anyway.

There was also an information number for national telephone traffic. It was 008. They didn't connect you, just gave you the number. Only in later years you could let them connect you as an extra service, but there was an extra charge too.

We also had numbers for a time signal (002) and for the weather forecast from our national weather institute (003).

There were more such numbers, they were all listed at the back of every phonebook.

BTW, every phone cord had four wires, I don't know if that was different than in other countries?

 

[michaelman2]

Hey Jamie, 

 

Read your posting....however in 1962?   TSPS boards were not even produced until the early 1970s.   (quick edit...I just found a TSPS board from 1961, so I was wrong).

 

Hey 1962 was a year before I was even born, so you may indeed be correct.  I just remember that in the US cordboards in certain areas (central office boards) were still around until 1980.   Catalina island was a still a completely manual exchange until 1978.  Meaning the operator had to complete the residents telephone calls.   There were no dials on the telephones.  A resident or business of Catalina would simply pick up a telephone and the operator would be notified and the customer would be connected to another resident/business or an outside trunk and then the call "dialed" by the operator.   There was another completely manual exchange on the east coast and I believe somewhere in Maine that was modified / modernized in 1978.

 

There were of course many Private Branch Exchange cordboards still in use until the 1980s.   These usually were large multi position switchboards that could handle cellular / car phones and other technologies that the early electronic boards could not handle.

 

I did learn after some more research that the first telecommunications satellite was in operation in 1962.  I did not realize this until after reading the timeline.      

 

So you may indeed be correct....I shared a link below...interesting.   

 

Thanks for your post.  

http://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2012/1/16/AT&T-Archives-TSPS-Operator

 

[rp2813]

Through a good friend, in 1980 I met another friend who lived in Napa, CA.  At that point in time, he said it had only been about a year since Napa exchanges no longer required dialing Operator for long distance.   In the more populated parts of the SF Bay Area, direct dial long distance was widely available by the mid '60s.

 

In Crockett, CA,  not too far east of the SF Bay Area, they didn't have dial phones until the mid to late '70s.  That exchange may have been the last in the state to transition to dial service.

 

While I was working at Pacific Bell, the old timers would often say that Pacific Telephone had always been Ma Bell's ugly stepchild.   We got everything last.  Even the heavily recycled 302 type telephone sets, introduced in 1937, were still being deployed for residential service into the early '60s, a good dozen years after the modern 500 models had been introduced east of the Rockies.  There was one mechanical switch still remaining here in this city that was closing in on population 1,000,000 back in the early '90s.  Subscribers in that exchange couldn't even get Call Waiting over a dozen years after most others in the area had been using it and other features, which became available with upgrades to electronic switching equipment.  Ma Bell's legacy was a tough one to shake for Pac Bell until the Telecommunications Act of 1996 changed the telecom game forever, and not necessarily for the better.