A piece of history: First long distance device among museum treasures
Staff reporter
"Number, please."
That's what callers used to hear when they picked up a telephone to place a call.
Communities had switchboards and operators to transfer calls from one person to another and from one town to another.
At Marion Historical Museum, photographs indicate that Marion had telephone switchboards as early as 1900.
One photo is of Grace Wright, operator, with Marion's first telephone central switchboard. The switchboard was owned by Charles Wells. Wells, Harry Yager, and Earl Magathan installed the service.
According to museum curator Cynthia Blount, the photo was taken circa 1900.
A second photo shows switchboard operator Sadie Keller with Marion Telephone Exchange. This photo also was believed to have been taken around 1900.
Switchboards were privately owned and typically located in homes with an operator being available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Marion's first long distance switchboard to McPherson was donated by Earl Magathan, and is on displayat the museum.
One of the interesting features on the board is an instrument called a "calculagraph."
The instrument has a clock in the center with levers on either side, similar to a paper punch.
"I had always been curious what that was," Blount explained, until one day a visitor explained to Blount the calculagraph was used to meter long distance phone calls.
"A piece of paper or a card would be slipped in and marked on one end when the telephone call began," said Blount. "When the phone call was over, the other end of the card was marked."
This method was used to charge patrons a fee for long distance calls.
Recognition
In 1935, three operators at the Marion switchboard were recognized by the president of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.
A certificate that hangs by the switchboard reads:
"On May 30, 1935, three men were overcome by gas in a cistern when Miss Elizabeth Scubb, an operator, who at the time was visiting at the house next door, learned of the accident. She promptly called the telephone office and told Miss Lillie Keazer and Mrs. Winifred Meierhoff, who were on duty at the time.
"She asked them to send someone with a ladder. Because it was Memorial Day and an air circus was in town, considerable difficulty was encountered by Miss Keazer and Mrs. Meierhoff in reaching people qualified to help.
"They persisted in their search by means of telephone calls and in a short time were successful in summoning doctors and volunteer firemen, through whose combined efforts the men were removed from the cistern and revived."
