The existing network at any time is always outmoded (and if it weren't,
everything would cost more).
When manual operator, hand-crank systems were possible, *most* people had
to send young Jimmy off to Aunt Bessie's to invite her to dinner.
In about 1955, we stopped at a new Chevron station (just) inside the Los
Angeles city limits coming down from the grapevine on what was to become
I-5. The station sported a new glass-and-aluminum phone booth, inside was
a new pay phone instrument: with its shiny new hand crank and
instructions. It was several years after that that the last hand-keyed
railroad telegraphy station in North America was shut down.
In 1971 when I lived in Ann Arbor, half the phones in town were
NOrmandy-6xyyy, where x was not 6.
The switch which did that was a 5-level step-by-step switch (with tone
translator, whose pulse output was audible if you strained), which had been
THE Ann Arbor switch, providing 5 digit local service. Calling between
numbers in NO-6 (666), you could dial 1 or more leading 6s, then the last
four. [I never found a "too many 6s" threshold, but I stopped at about
20.] After seeing a 6, it effectively said "ah, that's me" and tossed out
6s until it saw something else.
--John
-- John Baxter (Born before ENIAC, but not by much.) jwblist@olympus.net Port Ludlow, WA, USA
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