LONDON'S SUPER-EXCHANGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21562, 5 August 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

LONDON'S SUPER-EXCHANGE

GIRL TELEPHONE OPERATORS London has now the world's supertelephone exchange—a magnificent new " functionalist " building looking out over the Thames, and, to the regret of the Lord Mayor and civic officials, blocking the view from the river toward St. Paul's Cathedral. The prince of Wales visited the exchange recently, and walked around the international section through which calls by the thousand from all parts of the world are put through at all hours of the night and day. He saw some dozens of girls at their switchboards, with telephones over their ears, talking French, German, Italian and Spanish as they connected up subscribers as far apart as Cairo and Bueuos Aires, Home and New York. He was told that the exchange was one of the wonders of the world and that it was all-British. The Prince watched the little coloured lights wink and disappear and heard the girls call and reply over thousands of miles of land and sea. Tin? new' exchange is really the " speech-centre " of the globe so far as radio-communication is concerned. All the roads may have led to Rome in a day when highways were the main means of getting about Europe. But now the magic of the electronic wave has made speech between nations thousands of miles apart the commonplace of commercial and social life. And' in this invisible network, London is the essential link. No one who wishes to talk across the oceans and continents can do so unless his voice first passes through the great white building in Queen Victoria Street.