WORLD-WIDE

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3183, 28 May 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

WORLD-WIDE

A MILLION TELEPHONE CALLS. There is no word yet for a man who has made a million telephone calls, but three men in London on 30th March last (says the Manchester Guardian) celebrated the completion of their twenty-fifth year on the telephone staff of the Savoy Hotel, and each of them, the hotel authorities say, had made more than a million telephone calls. During that tune they have seen the telephone calls increased from thirty to a thousand daily, and all Europe, America, Australia New Zealand, and ocean ships •linked to London by telephone, and the introduction of dial telephony. On one recent occasion five of the cabinets under their control were occupied by people talking simultaneously to New York, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Berlin. The busiest time on the trans-At-lantic telephone was just after the opening and during the Wall Street crisis of 1929. The largest transAtlantic call recorded at this hotel lasted 93 minutes, and the cost was about £3OO. Before Pans was connected with New York one American woman used to fly to England, telephone to her husband m New York, and fly back to France the same day. One American visitor worried about his health, and, not knowing the rating of doctors here, had daily consultations with his doctor in New York. During the political crisis in Australia at the time of the last Imperial Conference (continues the Guardian) Mr Scullin, the Australian Prime Minister, was in London, and he spent hours daily in telephone conference with Canberra, 12,000 miles away. Some guests in the Savoy Hotel run up bigger bills for their telephone calls than for their accommodation. Through constantly calling foreign cities these telephone operators have formed friendships with operators in exchanges in many far parts of the world.