AUTOMATIC TELEPHONY.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1921, Page 7

AUTOMATIC TELEPHONY.

DOMINION’S IDEAL POSITION. “Great Britain and North America are now convinced that machine-switch-ing (automatic) telephony is the only economical system of meeting the future needs of telephone service. This conclusion was arrived at in New Zealand in 1911,” states the Chief Engineer, in a report to the Postmaster-General. At a later stage he says:—“For the large multi-office areas in the United States and for the five largest cities in Great Britain the Western Electric panel system has been adopted. The system being installed in our four chief centres and several provincial towns is the Western Electric rotary, and it is already giving service in several European cities and one or two towns in England. The panel and rotary are both ‘impulse-storing systems —i.e., the impulses are received and stored in ‘registers.’ The panel, because of its being manufactured in 500-line units, is considered more suitable for large areas; some authorities go so far as to say that no other existing system is capable of handling telephone traffic in such large multi-office areas as London and New York. From what I have seen of the Western Electric Company’s panel and rotary machine-switching telephone exchanges, I am of an opinion that in some respects the rotary has advantages over the panel, especially for conditions existing in New Zealand. Rotary is cheaper to instal, and costs less to maintain.

“New Zealand is in an ideal position for the introduction of modern machineswitching apparatus. We have only three of what may be termed modern manually-operated exchanges —viz, Invercargill, Timaru, and Hastings. The branching multiple magneto switchboards in the cities and larger towns have, in the majority of cases, reached a condition where they are both difficult and expensive to maintain. Under the conditions existing to-day in the country, it will be economical to instal automatics in quite small communities, especially in localities adjacent to centres where the exchanges can be unattended, only visited at regulai periods for charging batteries and a little routine testing. Automatics would provide continuous service at places where the number of lines is so small that.even if the rates were very high the exchanges, if operated manually, would show a serious loss. Even in our small localities, where we have a comparatively large number of party lines, automatics could be installed.

“The magneto telephones on the long party lines would not have to be changed to enable these subscribers to enjoy automatic service; dials for calling could be attached to the magneto telephones. The party-line subscribers under this system would be given individual numbers, thus called by automatic code ringing. The magneto ringers of these partyline telephones would be used for calling from one to another party on the same line. This would avoid the necessity for placing expensive revert,ive ringing apparatus in the automatic exchanges.”