A private branch exchange (PBX) in a business usually has an attendant console, or an auto-attendant function, which bypasses the operator. ==History== Following the invention of the telephone in 1876, the first telephones were rented in pairs which were limited to conversation between the parties operating those two instruments.
The use of a central exchange was soon found to be even more advantageous than in telegraphy. In May 1877, The Holmes Burglar Alarm Company in Boston, Massachusetts, established by Edwin T.
The switchboard operated telephone instruments manufactured by Charles Williams, a licensee of the Alexander Graham Bell company. In January 1878 the Boston Telephone Dispatch company had started hiring boys as telephone operators.
Thus, on September 1, 1878, Boston Telephone Dispatch hired Emma Nutt as the first woman operator.
The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, and was operated by switchboard operators who used electrical cords or switches to establish the connections. The electromechanical automatic telephone exchange, invented by Almon Strowger in 1888, gradually replaced manual switchboards in central telephone exchanges around the world.
Late in the 1890s this measure failed to keep up with the increasing number of lines, and Milo G.
In 1894, New England Telephone and Telegraph Company installed the first battery-operated switchboard on January 9 in Lexington, Massachusetts. Early switchboards in large cities usually were mounted floor to ceiling in order to allow the operators to reach all the lines in the exchange.
This "reverse battery" signaling was carried over to later automatic exchanges. ==References== ==Further reading== Atlanta Telephone History: Part 1 - Early Telephone Service especially the section from 1905 on. History of telecommunications Switchboard
In 1919, the Bell System in Canada also adopted automatic switching as its future technology, after years of reliance on manual systems. Nevertheless, many manual branch exchanges remained operational into the second half of the 20th century in many enterprises.
Once the called party answered, the originating operator would advise him or her to stand by for the calling party, whom she'd then ring back, and record the starting time, once the conversation began. In the 1940s, with the advent of dial pulse and multi-frequency operator dialing, the operator would plug into a tandem trunk and dial the NPA (area code) and operator code for the information operator in the distant city.
If the distant city did not have dialable numbers, the operator would dial the code for the inward operator serving the called party, and ask her to ring the number. In the 1960s, once most phone subscribers had direct long-distance dialing, a single type of operator began to serve both the local and long-distance functions.
These operators were almost always women until the early 1970s, when men were once again hired.
If the operator could not get through by dialing the number, she could call the inward operator in the destination city, and ask her to try the number, or to test a line to see if it was busy or out of order. Cord switchboards used for these purposes were replaced in the 1970s and 1980s by TSPS and similar systems, which greatly reduced operator involvement in calls.
The customer would, instead of simply dialing "0" for the operator, dial 0+NPA+7digits, after which an operator would answer and provide the desired service (coin collection, obtaining acceptance on a collect call, etc.), and then release the call to be automatically handled by the TSPS. Before the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was common for many smaller cities to have their own operators.
If the operator could not get through by dialing the number, she could call the inward operator in the destination city, and ask her to try the number, or to test a line to see if it was busy or out of order. Cord switchboards used for these purposes were replaced in the 1970s and 1980s by TSPS and similar systems, which greatly reduced operator involvement in calls.
The customer would, instead of simply dialing "0" for the operator, dial 0+NPA+7digits, after which an operator would answer and provide the desired service (coin collection, obtaining acceptance on a collect call, etc.), and then release the call to be automatically handled by the TSPS. Before the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was common for many smaller cities to have their own operators.
TSPS allowed telephone companies to close smaller toll centers and consolidate operator services in regional centers which might be hundreds of miles from the subscriber. In the mid 1980s the Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) opened their own Operator Services offices with a system called TOPS (Traffic Operator Position System) to act as local and intraLATA telephone operators.
Operators from AT&T returned to work for the BOC as the intraLATA traffic was cut to the BOC. In the early 1990s AT&T replaced TSPS with OSPS (Operator Service Position System).
As of 2004 the only AT&T operator offices remaining were located in Houston, Texas, and Jacksonville, Florida.
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