SELF-ACTING! TELEPHONE.

Northern Advocate, 15 February 1912, Page 3

SELF-ACTING! TELEPHONE.

NO MORE EXCHANGES,

A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT.

The telephone girl, the crescendo "Hello! Hello! Exchange," and the exasperating delays will (says a London newspaper) shortly be things of the past. The first public demonstration of the working of the automatic telephone sytsem which the General Post Office has ordered for some provincial towns, was given at DonningtoE House Strand, London, on November 23 ? and it was shown that by this system one subscriber could ring up another without the aid of any exchange operator and without any loss oi time. The Strowger system, a combination of American inventions, has already been working for years in over fifty towns in the United States and in many other parts of the world. At the beginning of 1911 four experts from the English Post Office went across the sea to see it in use, and as a result of their report one installation has been ordered from the London Central Post Office, another for Epsom, and a third for Portsmouth, while negotiations are in progress for Leeds and other towns. The London automatic service is not for the use of the public. It is being put up so that the genei'al Post Office officials may thoroughly test it. But 600 subscribers in Epsom will be connected with it, and' a large number in Portsmouth early in the New Year. If arrangements are complete the system a r Leeds will include over 5000 subscribers. London will have to wait, as the authorities are thoroughly anxious to test the working of the system before introducing it into the most couip:... . ~_;.tj.ione service in tk* world.

The demonstration was given by the British Insulated Helsby Cables, limited, the Company that is introducing the system into Great Britain. Mr Taylor, vice-chairman of the comp;iny, introduced Mr D. Sinclair, formerly engineer-in-chief of the National Telephones Company, and Mr Sinclair explained the working of the system. He said that automatic telephone exchanges are not newl He himself had invented and installed one 27 yearfe ago. But the difficulty had always been to make them deal efficiently with a large number of lines. One of the advantages of the Strowger system that it works equally well for 100 or 100,000, or any number of lines. In Chicago he saw a system with over 30,000 subscribers v-orking perfectly smoothly.

Mr Sinclair said that the many faults of our present system were not all due to the much-blamed operators. But in America the system worked far more- satisfactorily than the present English method because wherever it was in use each subscriber became his cwn operator. Another great of the autOtiirtJe s>stein was its secrecy, and no one could possibly overhear any conversation.

A demonstration of the working followed. Prom one machine in the centre of the room i: was possible to ring up other telephones. So far as the subscriber is concerned the system is perfectly simple. The instrument is like that now in use, with the additicn of a figured dial. Above this dial ii a perforated disc, the figures on the dial showing through the perforations . To ring up a number, the subscriber puts his finger in the hole above each figure of that lrumber in turn, and turns the disc round to a "stop." Thus jf he wants 123 on the A exchange, he first turns the hole in the disc through which A is showing round to the top, and then does the same with the numbers.!, 2 and 3. To obviate any possible mistake through his making a pause between the figures ,that is, to avoid his getting put on to No. 3 2 while ringing 123, there are the same number of digits in every number on an exchange. So No. 1 on an exchange with less than a thousand subscribers would be 001. If the numbers ran into tens of thousands it would be 00001.

The working of the automatic exchange was very interesting. As the subscriber gavo the number or liis exchange the machine put him through to that exchange. Then as he gave the first one he was switched on to the first hundred; when he gave the two he was switched to the twenties of that hundred, and the final three

gave him the l J ne he wanted. If that line was engaged he heard the "buzz" with which we are all so familiar. If there was anything wrong with the machine it automatically signalled to the one superintendent who in place of the hundreds of operators now employed, will look after each exchange. Mr Keith, who is responsible for this combination of inventions, said that the perfected machine had cost him over twenty years of (oil, besides

employing many inventors. As an instance of its value, he mentioned that in Cuba where, owing to the different languages in use, they had formerly to employ operators speaking seven languages, the automatic machine did all the necessary work.