Collect call from Rockford to Sycamore, Illinois in 1957 [telecom]

The question isn't easy to answer because in 1957 the Bell System and non-Bell Independent companies were making extensive improvements to the physical plant. The level of automation involved in placing the call would vary depending on what equipment had been installed at that particular point in time.

Let's assume the caller knows the desired party's phone number*.

Anyway, the first step would be for the caller to dial their local operator and that would in Rockford; a caller would not be able to connect to a distant operator. The Rockford operator would take down the details of the call and prepare a toll ticket. I'd guess this took about 30 seconds.

Upon receiving the call, the Rockford operator would've had several options depending on the level of dial automation. It's very possible that she would've simply plugged into DeKalb/Sycamore (it wasn't that far from Rockford) and dialed the desired number herself. The call would then take only a few seconds to complete.

However, if the switching was all manual, it's also possible that the Rockford operator may have had to contact the DeKalb inward operator and ask for Sycamore, then be connected to the local Sycamore town operator who would make the final connection. This would add about a minute or two to the connection time. Of course, if the Sycamore operator was busy or there were no trunks available, the call would take longer, and this did happen in that era.

Assuming the called line wasn't busy and someone answered, the operator would inquire if they would accept a collect call. If affirmative, the call was connected.

In some cases back then, if there was no answer or the line was busy, an operator would offer to try the call again. She would put the toll ticket aside and attempt the connection later. As toll traffic grew, this practice was discontinued.

The fact that the telephone companies were different generally did not affect connection time as the Bell System and Independents were inter-connected. However, a few small Independent companies, such as serving an isolated small town, may have had limited capacity and poor service. Back then, a tiny village could've had only a part-time operator working in her home, who interrupted her house chores as the calls came in. (The book, "From Muttering Machines to Laser Beams" covers that arrangement.)

• Back then, sometimes long distance calls were placed by name, as in "Operator, please get me John Smith in Peoria". The toll operator would first contact Information in Peoria to get the number, and then would place the call. After the war, the Bell System discouraged this as it took up time; it encouraged callers to keep a personal phone book, and for decades even provided blank books for that purpose.

:Last month I was contacted by individuals working on a kidnap & murder :case from 1957. Thanks to cooperation from AT&T (imagine that) they had :already proved beyond reasonable doubt that in 1957 a payphone existed at :a certain spot in Rockford, Illinois. A collect call made from this :payphone has become central to establishing a timeline in which minutes, :even seconds matter.

I doubt you'll be able to get a very good timeline. In the best case, placing that call wouldn't take very long. Get the local operator, they get the remote operator, the remote operator rings the phone, called party answers on the first ring. The difference between that and the called party answering on the fifth or six ring is about 30 seconds. If there's a delay at any step, then the time would be longer. There could easily be a minute of delay at any of those steps, more if the call had to wait on a trunk from Rockford to Sycamore.

You might be able to establish a lower bound (about a minute, I'd think), but unless you can find the operators involved, and they remember that call (and why would they?), you'll never know the actual timing.