Word: switchboard
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...infallible sign of a really great murder is the appearance of the Western Union Co.'s giant portable electric switchboard, capable of despatching 20,000 words an hour over 180 wires. This behemoth is also used for such spectacles as Dempsey-Tunney fights, otherwise it sulks in storage...
...they ran to the student dormitories and herded the sleepy boys to safety. They knew that they had neither chance nor means to extinguish the blaze. Water was too scant in the mountains. They telephoned Fort Smith. The night telephone operator there saw their signal flashing redly from her switchboard; asked, respectfully, what they wished; put them in instant connection with the Fort Smith fire department...
...dragging him towards a door from the cellhouse into the adjacent hospital. They were telling him to get the master key. Turnkey Singleton was answering that the master key, which would open the main door of the cellhouse, had been taken away from its usual place at the telephone switchboard...
...furious convicts turned their attention to Guard Charles Gorhanson, who was trying to drag out the dying Singleton. Pricking his back with their knives, they made Gorhanson buzz to the switchboard guard the signal for opening the cellhouse. Guard Gorhanson buzzed long and angrily. The switchboard man guessed something was wrong and slammed the door shut...
...Such, however, was the appearance of the elevator starter that he allowed himself to be cajoled by friends into accepting a lift. "Let me out at the 16th floor, please," he said. With amazement and a shock of terror, he watched the operator press a little button on a switchboard at his elbow. As other passengers entered the polished car, the operator pressed a button for each, corresponding to the designated floor. Finally, at a gesture from the starter, the operator touched a lever within the car, causing the outside doors to shut. Without delay, the car drifted upward...