Circuit switching
With circuit switching, the telephone system created a physical connection from the person initiating the call to the person receiving the call. This is not to say there was a cable that ran my house to my friend's house. There would be a cable that connected my house to the telephone exchange, and from there another cable was then connected to create a connection to another exchange where the process was repeated until the final exchange would connect me to my friend's house.
You may have seen this in action if you have seen an old black and white movie with a scene at a telephone exchange. The telephone operators would manually plug and unplug the cables to make or end the physical connection. Because it would only be ...
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