OFFICE TELEPHONES

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 81, 2 October 1924, Page 6

OFFICE TELEPHONES

COMBINATION WITH AUTO

MATICS.

Though the automatic telephone has cured many of the defects of the manual system, it has been unable to give some of the advantages that the manual has. One.of the advantages of the manual system in a large office or warehouse is that the telephone can be used for communication between departments, whereas tho automatic ordinarily cannot be so used, or when being used for intercommunication, makes the line ring as "engaged" to tho outside caller. Another advantage that the manual system has over the automatic is this: A busy firm may have two or moro main lines from the exchange; if central is asked for one number and that happens to be engaged, the good sense of tho operator will tell her to plug m on one of the other numbers. Tho engineers bf the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department havo been doing some hard thinking in order to obviate these defects and to provide for a city office or warehouse a tolephono system that will give all tho advantages of both the manual and automatic systems without any of the disadvantages, and at the same time provide for lnter-communica-tiom Mr. J. R. Smith, tho Telegraph Engineer, worked out the idea of applying the inter-phone system to the automatic system at present in operation in Wellington. After a test in the engineer's office, this system has now been installed in the new offices of Messrs. Mazengarb, Hay, and Macalister. Three consecutive main lines are connected to the office. If a call comes from outside on ono lino and that number happens to bo engaged, it is automatically switched on to. the next one. If that is engaged, it passes automatically on to the third one. The announcement can b e made at the main counter either by the agitation of a. shuttor, or, if the operator has to go away from the counter, by bells. When the call is answered it is passed on to the room required by merely pressing a button opposite the name of the person who is wmted. This gives a buzzar-call, indicating which telephone he is to answer, and he answers by pressing tho button in his room opposite that telephone. Should he then desire to introduce either a principal or a clerk into the conversation, all he has to do is to press the button, with the appropriate number of buzzes, opposite that person's name.

Another convenient device is tho "holding key," which is used in order temporarily to switch off an outside caller so that he may not hear the private conversation going on through the internal tolephono. When that private conversation is finished, the holding key is again released, and the outside caller automatically reintroduced. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the new system is the facility with which the telephones may bo used for internal communications. Any principal or person on the staff may be called up simply by the pressing of a button. The old manual system, when used for internal communication, required the constant attention of an operator in the main office pushing in and pulling out plugs. That operator could not leave his stand for a minute without causing irritation and delays. In the new system no service is required from an intermediary. The new system merely requires the pressing of a button by the caller and ot another by the person called.

Tho installation described is understood to be the first combination of an inter-phone system with an automatic system yet effected in New Zealand or Australia.