The automatic switchboard telephone system of Los Angeles, Cal.

This paper narrates some of the history and describes the present automatic switchboard telephone system in the City of Los Angeles. It describes how the system, which began to give service with one manual switchboard in the year 1902, has gradually been extended and transformed through several interesting stages of combined automatic and manual operation, until it now comprises 15 automatic offices and a traffic distributor switchboard which serve a total of 60,000 subscribers stations — the largest automatic switchboard system in the world. The layout of central offices in the present plant is shown in contrast with the layout of offices in the Bell telephone plant of approximately the same size, operating in the same city. The traffic distributor switchboard used for handling the outgoing calls from a large number of private branch exchange switchboards is the largest board of the kind in operation, includes thirty operators' positions and handles a heavy traffic. A general explanation is given of the equipment of the board, methods used in operating it and of the economies realized by means of it. Specially interesting and important features in handling the telephone business of a large metropolitan area like Los Angeles are the methods used in caring for calls for time and for information concerning subscribers' numbers, addresses, etc., and for answering subscribers' complaints and calls for long distance connections. All of these methods are discussed at some length. The paper closes with a concise statement of the practise of using standards of adjustment and performance for securing uniformly good service from the automatic apparatus scattered over this area of about two hundred square miles and handling from 500,000 to 600,000 calls each week day.