Word: switchboard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Somehow, the party went on and on. Holdup men knocked over the front office from time to time (and once murdered a clerk), a waitress was arrested for peddling narcotics; the switchboard was taken over by a telephone operator who claimed to read character from voices, and who refused to put through calls from types he disliked. Still the guests came, and still they dropped into the pool. "I used to wait for them to come home and fall in," remembers Playwright Arthur Kober. "It was like waiting for a shoe to drop. I'd hear the splashes...
Bribes & Calls. Richest ground for spying is the U.S. oil industry, where geological maps command a king's ransom. The Harvard surveyors found that one oilman was paying geologists from five competing companies $500 each a month to feed him undercover information. At another company, a switchboard operator intercepted long-distance calls between executives, heard when and where the company planned to buy leases, sold the tips to an outside broker, who grabbed up the leases. In Casper, Wyo., an oil executive quit without turning in his office keys, later was caught fingering through secret maps in another executive...
...virtual standstill. In Washington, the world's talkingest city (70 telephones per 100 persons v. New York City's 53.8), President Eisenhower can have instant contact with any Cabinet member via a black and gold phone on his desk. In the Pentagon the world's largest switchboard handles 270,000 calls a day from more than 50,000 telephones. Two telephones (a red one connecting with U.S. bases, a black one with overseas bases) at Strategic Air Command headquarters would flash the first orders to U.S. bombers to answer an enemy attack...
...Million Emergencies. Telephone lore is rich with the stories of heroic men and women who have used the telephone to save the lives of others in answering 12 million emergency calls every year. In 1908 Operator .Sally Rooke stayed at her switchboard to warn the people of Folsom, N.Mex. of a flash flood until she herself was swept to death by the waters. A Chicago couple who reached a phone just before being overcome by leaking gas gave the operator who summoned help an oft-voiced tribute: "We wish to thank you for saving our lives...
Some of the girls depart for such far-away places as Hanover, New Haven, Princeton, and some even come to Cambridge; others remain on the campus to entertain visitors. The switchboard in every dormitory is tied up for the entire afternoon, and the living room is full to over-flowing. A mad flurry of excitement pervades the scene, and the slow week-day pace quickens in preparation for the holiday...