But Ma Bell *DID* have common control on some step offices.
They had their 'Director' system, 712-366 was a good example of this.
The Director unit acted as a register-sender for both intra and inter-office calls, storing the digits, and driving the switches in the local office or outpulsing them to another office.
It also allowed customers to have 'real' touch-tone, as opposed to Rube-Goldberg tone to pulse conversion.
I've been told that they had some of these in Des Moines as well.
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