"No. 0 AUTOMATIC"

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 3, 5 January 1916, Page 8

"No. 0 AUTOMATIC"

THE MODERN TELEPHONE.

INSTALLATION IN,WELLINGTON,

The installation of the automatic telephone system in Wellington is proceeding very satisfactorily, but the war has made a great difference. The plant was being manufactured by the Western Electric Company at Antwerp. Then cams the Germans. What became of that portion destined for New Zealand is unknown. The company started works in England, and they were taken possession of by the Government for military purposes. Work then went on at Chicago, but was hampered by the loss of so many of the company's workmen engaged upon it through the capsizing of a crowded excursion steamer at the quay side. But, notwithstanding all these difficulties, parcels of the equipment' continue to come to hand. At Newtown Post Office, in quarters formerly occupied by the postmaster, the automatic installation is proceeding. Here there will be five hundred ordinary subscribers and one hundred party wires, of which four subscribers are on each line, so that nine hundred users will be provided for. They will be served by the Newtown station. At present subscribers have wires that run into the Wellington Exchange in Stout-street, receiving messages that will have to go out again over other wires to Newtown. The new system will not only effect a saving of time and temper, but of copper wire also. . The surrounding districts — Miramar and Island Bay—will go through the Newtown station, and there will le "satellite" exchanges at various points around Wellington, leading to economy in working and efficiency in communication. At Courtenay-place, in a special concrete building, at the back of the post office, a large Automatic Exchange is now being installed. It will make provision for 1320 subscribers and 100 party lines. This exchange is but a type of others that are and will be established in the chief centres of the Dominion. The complete installation of the system all over the country will take a very long' time, but it is proposed to utilise equipment which will be displaced from time to time in other places where the exigencies of the situation do not warrant the immediate installation of the newest pattern automatics. The plant itself 13 as exact and sensitive as a watch, and certainly quite as complicated—all perfectly simple to the electricians, but bewilderingly complex to anyone else. Nevertheless, it is running quite smoothly wherever installed and, from the subscribers' point of view alone, is greatly superior to the older manual system. The subscriber calls up nobody except the person required—and if he is in gets him. The engineer at Courtenay-place is Mr. D. Campbell, and at Newtown Mr. E. H. Lawn.