It was common for large organizations for individual departments to have their own key systems for within the department, sometimes individual departments had their own PBX. The "trunks" on the PBX were actually extensions off the main switchboard; often there were true outside trunks as well. Users would dial 9 for an outside line and 8 for the main PBX line. Some places had a variety of outgoing lines and users had a series of 8n codes for whatever particular line they wanted.
It was also common for large organizations to have such arrangements. One or more people were essentially assigned full time to the facility from Bell. Large hospitals and other institutions would have thousands of extensions in multiple buildings and there'd always be repair or change orders.
The loud TT burst is an annoying aspect that continues to this day.
Their fire code was "Signal Signal Signal". The fire alarm gongs sounded like calm department store chimes instead of the usual loud urgent tone. The hospital ran fire drills often and all employees and volunteers received some fire training. Everyone else I've ever been I was told not to fight a fire but to leave the area. In the hospital we were taught to fight the fire.
The cardiac code was "Pacemaker Team". The operators phoned the elevator operator to have him place the elevator at the appropriate spot. The elevators were very slow. (I used to use the visitors' elevators instead of staff elevators for which I got into trouble. I didn't understand why, especially if I used them outside of visitor's hours when the elevators were idle but the staff elevators were busy.)
My hospital converted to Centrex after I left. I believe it was served by an old panel switch or maybe #1 xbar (part of a big city exchange). I think they needed to wait until the exchange was converted to ESS.
Obviously at some point they converted from rotary to TT. I wonder what it was like to convert their thousands of hard wired extensions, included many complex key systems.
When I was there it was served by a very busy twelve positi> What, you think anybody remembers phone ettiquette? There is no
The chief operator -- the stern kind in the classic tradition -- retired. She was back the next day as a volunteer handling calls, though not working as many hours.
When I was leaving the hospital, they added "meet me" page for outside calls. Inside calls were announced as before. Outside calls that needed paging were sent to special extensions that the page operator answered. She then paged the person with a matching special extension number which resulted in a meet. At this time the page operators were moved off the cord board and given a desk with Call Directors to use instead. That freed up two positions on the cord board to handle traffic. As mentioned, at this time (late 70s) they were going to beepers. Again, I don't understand today, when beepers are cheap and universal, that there were so many page requests in a hospital.