A General Switching Plan for Telephone Toll Service

N January 25, 1915, telephone service was, with due ceremony, inaugurated between the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of this country. This occasion marked a great step forward both technically and commercially. Before that time, the limit of practicable telephone transmission had been about 1,500 miles. The transcontinental service was made possible by the completion of numerous important developments and particularly by the perfection of telephone repeaters and of means for applying them to long wire circuits. Until then the Pacific States and their neighboring states had been isolated telephonically from the eastern and midwestern parts of the country. The demonstration of commercially practicable telephone circuits across the continent gave a great impetus to the idea of universal service, that is the provision of a telephone plant such that telephone service could be given at commercially attractive rates between any two telephones in the country. In the fifteen years since the opening of the first transcontinental circuits, the ideal of universal service has to a large extent been realized. Practically all the telephones of the United States and a large part of Canada now have provision for connection with the countrywide toll telephone network, more than 99 per cent being included. To achieve universal service, however, involves a great deal more. Circuits must be provided in such numbers and so arranged that connections between any two telephones can be established quickly and without too many intermediate switching points.