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switchboard
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Rows of women in long skirts and blouses sit at a large telephone switchboard, manually connecting calls in an early 1900s city exchange. A woman telephone operator wearing a headset sits at a manual switchboard, connecting calls by plugging cords into rows of jacks, circa 1900.
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switchboard

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Rows of women in long skirts and blouses sit at a large telephone switchboard, manually connecting calls in an early 1900s city exchange.
manual central switchboard A manual central switchboard in an American city, c. 1900.

A switchboard is an apparatus, typically found in a telephone exchange, that consists of a panel with electric switches. These switches are arranged to connect, combine, and control multiple circuits. The earliest telephone exchanges, starting in 1878, used manually operated switchboards. These connected customers by inserting cords into jacks on the panel. Later, electromechanical systems like the step-by-step switch and the crossbar switch automated this process, allowing for direct dialing and more complex call routing. A "B switchboard" specifically handles trunk calls originating from other exchanges.1234

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4 Britannica Sources
  1. telephone - Manual switching
  2. B switchboard
  3. switchboard
  4. telephone - Electromechanical switching

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