If you made from California to Maryland in say the 50’s how would that bill be timed and calculated without computers monitoring the connection? How would your long distance phone bill be put together? Was there someone with an adding machine tallying up written receipts or what?
At a really high level abstraction, your local telephone operator would connect your line to the toll switchboard. The toll or long-distance operator would handle making the connection from the toll switchboard in California to a similar switchboard in Maryland, and as part of this service, they create a billing record for the CA - MD connection.
In the early days, the toll operator would manually write up what were called toll tickets, and they were periodically referred back to your local phone company so you could be billed for the call.
With the advancement of technology, the manual tickets and operators were replaced with switching equipment known as an access tandem, and the billing details were logged on punched paper tape, starting in about 1943, so your cross-country call in 1950 was probably routed on one of these installations.
Every morning, someone at the tandem office would cut the previous day’s tape and it would be transported to the accounting office for processing and billing. Despite the manual aspects of shipping the records, this was called Automated Message Accounting, or AMA. In the 60’s paper tape started to be replaced with magnetic tape, but the transportation of tapes to a centralized processing office was still done. From the late 70s, I can remember my father would occasionally have to hustle a box of tapes to the airport if the normal courier was late.
Much more, and almost painfully detailed info on early AMA can be found here.
My mother used to have this job. If someone in Jacksonville, TX wanted to make a long-distance call to a person in Utica, NY, the person making the call would tell my mom the details, then hang up. My mom would pull out her cord that connects her to Dallas (not a switch, or dialing, she pulled out the Dallas cord and plugged it in). My mom would then explain to the Dallas operator that she needed to be connected to the New York City operator. The operator in Dallas would physically plug in her call to the NYC jack on her board, then my mom would be talking to the operator in NYC. She would tell this operator that she needed Utica. When she got Utica, she would tell the operator there the name of the person she needed to reach, and the Utica operator would get them on the line. When this series of connections had been made, my mom would then call back the originator and connect them.
When the call connected, she would write the starting time down on a card, and monitor the call. When it completed, she would write down the finishing time, and file the card for the people who would do the billing.
See this, this thread right here? This is why I love the Dope! An obscure question, clearly and factually answered.
As an aside, my mom tells the story of when a technician visited her central office to work on the equipment, and he told her that they were working on equipment that would let a home telephone user call another person long-distance, without the intervention of an operator!
Needless to say, my mom, knowing what it took to set up a long-distance call, was incredulous.
And I imagine your mom (and all the other moms working there) were incensed too! That was their jobs that were getting automated away!
The entire history of the phone system is a story of increasing automation. Originally exchanges were three letters and four digits (well there was an earlier time that they weren’t, but let’s start there). If you called someone at the same exchange, you called the operator and gave her the four digit number you wanted. He (originally, they were all men with long arms) was sitting at a plug board with 100 rows and 100 columns and a number such as 3277 was in the 32nd row and 77th column (maybe vice versa) and he would run a plug from the position corresponding to your number (which he knew because he was plugged into it to talk to you) to the callee’s number. (How did he know to plug into your number? Was there a signal light or something?) Then you talked until you hung up. If you wanted to talk to a different exchange, he would plug into a trunk line (hence the British “trunk call” for what we call long distance) and go on from there. Of course, this was labor-intensive and rather expensive.
When I was a kid, I only had to dial four digits to call anyone in our town.
And we had a television that was able to get one whole station!
How did she know when the call ended? Did you have to get the operator’s attention to tell her you were done? Is that what the expression “ring off” means? If you forgot, did you get a whopper of a bill?
I’m not sure - maybe she just periodically listened in, or maybe there’s an off-hook indicator on her board.
Switchboards had lights to indicate connections or non-connections. When the operator saw one light going out, she pulled the plug on that connection.
Sounds like accurate billing relied heavily on having a switchboard operator who has paying attention then?
I really can’t say (but someone else probably can). My experience relates to an in-house PBX system at a bank with a single 1950’s switchboard, but the bank didn’t handle any internal billing, just connections. I think the central phone offices used essentially the same equipment, just more of it.
Long distance calling used to involve varying rates to account for the time spent in switching across multiple stations. Person-to-person calling was one of the methods where billing didn’t start until you were connected to the individual you were calling. This was used heavily in business where you might end up on hold waiting to talk to someone. I believe it dates to a previous time where you might have to wait for a line to clear up on a local switchboard.
To clarify the dates we’re talking about for my mom’s experience as a telephone operator, my parents got married in 1948, and I believe she started work as an operator shortly after that. She continued working as an operator or supervisor until 1973.
The story about the laborious process to set up a long-distance call I’m sure came from the early part of that period. My mom still has one of the operator earpiece/mouthpieces she used, with the mouthpiece being a separate thing that rested on her chest. Hers looks exactly like this picture I found: http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/4/9/2/5/1/8/webimg/605113520_tp.jpg
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Sounds like accurate billing relied heavily on having a switchboard operator who has paying attention then?
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Yes, as the line was physically occupied otherwise. Back in the era of toll switchboards, there may have only been 100 lines linking any given region to another, so they were closely monitored.
When the call ended, a “ring out” signal would be sent back to the originating station to signal the operator to release the line.