In 1948, when I was 16, in high school, I was hired me to maintain the telephone system at Lathrop, Missouri. There were 497 subscribers, all with magneto (crank) telephones.

In the afternoon after school, I hurried to the central office, located in a house just off the Lathrop main street, to examine trouble tickets and plan telephone repair for the day. I maintained the entire telephone system-all its inside and outside plant. Tasks included maintenance and repair of the switchboard, telephone cables, telephone circuits, and installation and repair of the magneto telephone instruments. In addition to maintenance and repair functions, I served as switchboard operator at night, substituting for other operators during some days. At night, I slept on the fold-down bed next to the switchboard. The whole town was usually in bed long before midnight, so it was only during emergencies, that the night alarm would arouse me.

This was a high paying job at 23 cents an hour. The rate for a phone was $1.97 per month, including tax. It remained at that low rate from the time I commenced employment in 1948, until the company was acquired by a regional mutual company in the 1960s.The capacity of the Stromberg-Carlson switchboard, installed in 1917, was 600 lines. Although there were three operator positions, more than one was rarely manned. On busy peaks, I would pitch in and help carry the load by manning a second position.

The operator was the most important public servant in the community. The operator was the forerunner of 911. It was the telephone operator who dispatched the ambulance, a doctor, or the fire department. If a home caught fire, the operator sounded the fire alarm and summed volunteer firemen. The first volunteer to arrive at the firehouse cranked the phone to determine the fire location. The operator, in turn, would ring up all the volunteers to notify those who might not have heard the siren. When the operator sounded the fire siren, those who heard it would call to ask for the location of the fire, creating a flurry of activity, which would have quickly overwhelmed an unskilled operator. But, operators knew to answer first-those of the volunteer firemen.

And it was the operator who would first learn of a death when the undertaker was called. And yes, the operator was Information Please and Long Distance and Time of Day to everyone. But she (or he in this case) was much more than that. The operator was the information center for the community.

Few subscribers called by number. Rather, they called by name. Operators memorized telephone numbers, so subscribers would not have to use a phone book, which was only published about every ten years anyway. They just called by saying, for example: Homer's and Lola's Cafe, to reach my parents restaurant. A subscriber, calling for Louie Van Buren might elicit from the operator: He's not at home. He's at Todd's Garage. Would you want me to ring there?" Yes, the operator was, indeed, the information source for the entire region including the surrounding rural areas.Then there was Long Distance. The operator ticketed and timed all long distance calls. After entering the calling and called numbers on the ticket, the name of the called person was noted if it was a person-to-person call. After establishing the connection, the operator timed the call, with the wall clock. There were no automatic Calculagraphs (as used by AT&T and the larger phone companies) so subscribers were rarely billed for more than the 3 minute minimum, although conversations often ran well beyond it.

Two long distance circuits to Kansas City provided distant city connections. The neighboring towns of Plattsburg, Cameron, and Holt were served by dedicated circuits. Calls to towns beyond these points were either routed through the neighboring switchboards, or through the AT&T operator in Kansas City. For example, a call to Lawson would be routed via the Holt operator. All long distance calling was well before the advent of Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) and long before the invention of the pushbutton telephone. Human beings completed all long distance calls everywhere.

Quality of long distance transmission was highly variable, especially in small rural communities like Lathrop, where the telephone service, provided by independent companies, was not on a par with that provided by the Bell System. A call routed through three or more points would sometimes require operators along the route to "repeat," verbatim, the conversation. I have done that many times.

As to the physical plant facilities at Lathrop, every telephone-a large, wall-mounted, oak box, with a long, gooseneck transmitter, a receiver hook, and a magneto crank-contained two huge Burgess batteries, hooked in series, to provide talking power for the transmitter. Turning the magneto crank signaled the operator.

The magneto generated a hefty 90 volts to ensure that the signal would overcome any ground leakage, which often afflicted rural phone lines, some of which were not much better than barbed wire fencing.

The electric current, generated by the magneto, released what was called a drop at the central office switchboard. The drop got its name from its design and behavior. Each telephone line terminated at the switchboard in an electromagnetic device equipped with a jack, and a small, metal shutter. This shutter, hinged at the bottom, was held in place flush with the switchboard face, by a latch. Cranking the phone activated the electromagnet, lifting its latch, thus releasing the shutter, allowing it to drop 15 degrees. Fluttering of the latch (the magneto produced an Alternating Current causing the electromagnet to make a fluttering sound) and its dropping signaled the operator.

Each of the three operator switchboard positions consisted of fifteen cord circuit pairs and two associated switchboard keys (switches). Each cord circuit pair carried a single telephone conversation. The two cords were arranged one in front of the other. These cords extended below the keyboard surface, with only the cord plugs visible at the keyboard surface. The cord itself remained inside the wooden switchboard cabinet in front of the switchboard operator's seat until seized by the operator. Lead weighted pulleys, through which the cords were threaded, held the cords down into the cabinet to keep them from entangling.

When a subscriber turned the crank and the metal shutter dropped, the operator seized the cord nearest the switchboard face, plugging it into the switchboard jack. This action mechanically restored the drop to its original latched position.Two inline switchboard keys (switches) were associated with each cord pair. When the operator inserted the cord into the jack to answer the calling subscriber, and moved the key nearest the operator forward, it connected the operator's headset transmitter and receiver to both cords, whereupon the operator asked Number Please?

Upon learning the called number from the calling subscriber, the operator placed the other cord of the pair into the jack of the called number, pulling the key forward, thus applying ringing current to the called line.

After ringing the called party, releasing this key restored it to its middle, closed position, disconnecting the operator headset from the connection. The operator could speak to both the calling and called parties by opening this key.

Another key-a single position one-closest to the switchboard face, served only to apply ringing current to the calling cord on the rare occasion when a called party wished to reconnect with the calling party, while cords were still in the jacks.

After a conversation, subscribers were to ring off, meaning they were to crank the magneto moderately, to activate ring off drops associated with each of the cords. This would allow the operator to remove the cords from the jacks. However, subscribers could rarely be trained to follow this practice, so the operator always opened the talking key to determine if a conversation had ended, by asking: Are you through? Getting no response, the cords were then removed from the jacks, ready to handle another call.With fifteen cord circuits at each of the three operator positions, 45 conversations could have occurred simultaneously

I ran the switchboard part-time from 1948 and maintained the phone system until employment with AT&T in July 1955. Those early years of learning basic telephone infrastructure from the ground up served to condition me for a successful career at AT&T, which lasted until retirement in 1985. During that period, I served in Kansas City, at AT&T Long Lines Headquarters in New York City, at AT&T Corporate Headquarters, New York, and at AT&T Marketing, Seattle.

To this day, I miss it all. On a final note, to my knowledge, I was the only male switchboard operator in the country during that time. In the very earliest days of telephony, almost all operators were boys (not men). The industry quickly switched over to women because boys were too boisterous and carefree to be good operators. So by the time I became an operator, there were no men or boys operating switchboards anywhere.

Richard H. Kerr
KerrRichardH@comcast.net