switchboard operator

Medium-to-large organisations often employ switchboard operators—specialised staff who answer general telephone calls to the organisation and usually maintain internal communication through telephones, semaphones ("bleeps") and pagers.

In hospitals, "switchboard" can also have duties in dealing with medical emergency (when announced on the telephone), disasters and resuscitation calls.

In the early days of telephony, through roughly the 1960s, companies used manual telephone switchboards and switchboard operators connected each call by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks. Each pair of plugs had a switch associated with it that let the operator participate in the call. Each jack had a light above it that lit when the telephone receiver was lifted (the earliest systems required a generator on the phone to be cranked by hand). Lines from the central office were usually arranged along the bottom row. Before the advent of direct distance dialing, switchboard operators would work with their counterparts in the central office to complete long distance calls.

See also

• Private branch exchange
• Telephone switchboard

Donate to Wikimedia