The Dawn of Long Distance
Have you ever watched one of those old-time movies in which someone makes a phone call by picking up the phone and saying, “Operator, get me Mohawk 4, 3-8-2-5!”? Suddenly, the scene changes to some person sitting at a switchboard like the one shown in Figure 8.2.
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FIGURE 8.2   Old-time telephone operator (photo courtesy of the Richardson Historical and Genealogical Society)
That was the telephone operator. The telephone operator made a physical link between your phone and the other phone, making your connection. The switchboard acted as a circuit switch, as plugging in the two wires created a physical circuit between ...

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