Back in the 60s, before digital computers, etc…, how did the phone company keep track of your phone cals in order to bill you?
I can’t imagine that the operators would log a long distance call onto a sheet and then send it to central billing, or anything like that, so I am curious how that kind of stuff happened?
Thanks,
hh
The 1960s were not “before digital computers,” so I’m going to go ahead and ask: do you mean “in the 1960s,” or “before digital computers”?
Expand your imagination then, that’s exactly what happened. Prior to the AXE local calls were also manual and entered on call cards that were held at the exchange.
British Post Office Telephones system With an automatic exchange, there was a meter with your number associated with it. It clocked up units used; this varied with the type of call [local, trunk] and the time of day [cheap, peak, standard rate]. Periodically the meter photographer came along and took a photograph of the meters with a special hooded camera, and the bills were prepared from that.
60s.
hh
Telephone central offices in the 1960’s used electro-mechanical switches that both routed the telephone call and fed recording devices. Among recording mediums used in the US were punch cards and paper tape reels (think of a magnetic tape reel but made out of paper, with holes punched in it to represent data).
Wiki article on automatic message accounting w/image of tape punching machine: