[Jo Piper3]

Switchboard​

I remember operating one in my first job when relieving the receptionist for lunch, etc. It really felt like you were actually doing something.

 

[grarob@internode]

Yes, I also remember relieving the switchboard operator whilst they had morning, afternoon tea and lunch or holidays & sick leave in the mid to late 70s. Now I wonder how I managed to remember which plug was for for who & how I didn’t get it in a terrible tangle

 

[Jo Piper3]

Yes, I also remember relieving the switchboard operator whilst they had morning, afternoon tea and lunch or holidays & sick leave in the mid to late 70s. Now I wonder how I managed to remember which plug was for who & how I didn’t get it in a terrible tangle

How did we possibly remember what plug was for which person? It was great fun but we were young and had good memories. The old Sylvester switchboard!
I was only 17 at that time.

 

[magpie1]

I had to operate one when my first job was a managerial apprenticeship in a large accommodation hotel....wow 3 months was insane, with 130 rooms let and a lot of overseas visitors wanting to ring home,.....àaaahhhhh. Was so glad when I finished that part of my apprenticeship I can tell you.

 

[Mrtnst]

I never worked with one of those, but I did have a role in getting one reinstalled to replace a new 'Wonderful' automatic switchboard.

It has a feature that allowed you to auto-forward calls to your extension to someone else.

So, several of us decided to see what would happen if we each Forwarded to each other in a closed loop.

Naturally we assumed that would be impossible, but we were wrong.

The entire switchboard melted down, literally... copper relays ended up as puddles on the floor.

The Japanese manufacturers were shocked, they had installed many hundreds of the units in multiple countries over several years and no one had ever tried to create a closed loop before.

This was the first installation in Australia and it lasted just 45 minutes.

Welcome to Australia

 

[LJ Cool]

I remember having a toy switch board I thought it was just fantastic and wanted to be a switchboard operator. By the time I grew up they were no longer used.