Out Of The Old Into The New

Telephone Company Gets Into New Offices

1000 Phones Changed

From Old to New Office in Twenty Minutes- Trouble With Only Twenty-Six

The new call board of the Michigan Bell Telephone Co. is in use and the management as well as subscribers are happy.

Saturday the old office was put out of business and about six months of arduous labor during which miles of new wire have been strung, new conduits put in, poles changed, taken out and reset and everything possible done to make the System here as modern as possible, came to an end and the management were enabled to judge the result of their work.

The changing - or cutting over, as it is technically called - of a telephone system is always full of interest and speculation to the initiate in electric matters and consequently there were a large number of visitors present Saturday evening to enjoy Manager Keech's hospitality and witness the actual changing of the boards.

The preliminary work of changing the nearly two thousand wires, necessary to supply the thousand subscribers the local office, had been going on for several weeks, all the wires having been transferred from the old offices and run into the new, the service being supplied by cables from the new to the old office, until the new board could be set up and ready for work. Everything was ready Saturday night and at 9:10 o'clock Mr. Keech gave the signal to begin cutting the old wires and in half an hour one thousand telephones had been changed over and not a subscriber inconvenienced for a single moment.

The system in the new office has been described in this paper, but it may be well to briefly outline it again. The new board, instead of having familiar drop tag and bell which gave notice to the operator that a subscriber had called, has a series of small electric lights, not larger than a dime- one for each subscriber- which light up when the subscriber takes down his receiver. The operator immediately answers the call by placing the office connecting pin in the caller's number-hole. This action lights another bulb just in front of the operator known as a test light. The connection with the party wanted is then made, which lights a second test light and the individual number lights are extinguished. The test lights remain lighted until the subscriber is through and hangs up his receiver, when they go out, thus notifying the operator that the line free again. Another feature about this system is that by it, where party lines are used one subscriber can be called without any alarm being sounded on the phones in any of the other places, which obviates a great annoyance.

In actual service Saturday evening as fast as a wire to the old offices was cut the little lamps signaled that things were all right and when through cutting it was discovered that in only twenty-six cases was there trouble or a failure to work. This is pronounced by experts to be a remarkable record and speaks highly for the excellent work of the constructing gang.

After the work was over Manager Keech entertained the visitors from out the city and a number of others to an elegant luncheon. Among those from out of the city were Managers Wakefield of Wyandotte, Lyons of Jackson, Platt of Battle Creek, Hughes of Flint, and Gordon of Ypsilanti.