Switched Lines - Literally - In Olden Days [TELECOM]

All the talk about the mid 60s Get Smart phone suddenly jarred my memory with respect to something I hadn't thought about in decades. Perhaps someone can clarify it.

In that era, I earned some money as a teenager by working as a delivery boy at a local pharmacy. I recall that at the close of business, they needed a way of having after-hours calls reach a human. The pharmacist would throw a switch on the wall (and for some reason I want to think it was a knife switch, but that might be my vivid imagination) and the incoming line to the pharmacy would now be directed to his home a mile or so away.

This was in suburban Philadelphia.

What sort of technology are we talking about here?

Art

Reply to
Arthur Shapiro
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I once worked in a hospital with Centrex in 1976. At 9 pm directly dialed calls to patient's rooms would be blocked. This was done by the operator's throwing a separate switch. I presume in both cases the switch closed a circuit that sent a directed the central office to act accordingly.

I doubt the pharmacy was a knife switch.

Reply to
hancock4

Either subscriber-controlled transfer, where the switch activated a circuit at the exchange which brought the home extension onto the line, or a simple external extension where the line was extended out to the home as an ordinary extension, but in a different location.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

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