Talking Phone Dials

To save the telephone companies money and to serve better those communities which have both the new dial and the old manual telephone service, Bell Telephone Laboratories invented a device which saves time and reduces errors on calls from dial to manual instruments. Last week the device was demonstrated in Manhattan.

The present system of putting through a dial telephone call is as follows: For each of the first three letters of the called exchange name, and for the four figures of the number and the letter of the party line, the caller turns the dial. Each dial turn actuates a delicate electro-magnet at the automatic exchange. If the call is to another dial call, the automatic exchange mechanically connects the call with the proper exchange, number and party, rings insistently. If the dial call is to a manual telephone, the automatic exchange mechanically registers the called number on the big board in a manual exchange, where an operator reads the number, plugs the call through. Because operators are trained to hear numbers, they read them relatively slowly from the call board, a costly and vexatious matter.

The new device, demonstrated last week by Assistant Vice President Sergius Paul Grace of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Inc., utilizes the auditory intelligence and accuracy of the manual operators. Instead of the dialer causing letters and numbers on the call board before the operator, for each letter and number he dials he causes a separate drum to revolve. On each drum is fixed a talking film on which one of the clearest-speaking operators in New York City, chubby Miss Catherine M. Shaughnessy, has registered digits or letters as the particular drum requires. When dialed, the drums swirl until the called symbols stop alongside telephoto tubes. Light shines through the exposed part of the drum film and modulates the tube current, which is transformed into the sound waves of Miss Shaughnessy's best accent. The manual operator listens, plugs in the call, does not even have to say "Thank you."

In cities the device is to be used only until all the community's telephones are changed to mechanical dialed ones. But for long distance use the machines are to be used until something even more efficient can be devised to help out the girl operators.

After showing off his talkie-phone, Mr. Grace demonstrated the newly Bell-discovered physiological fact that the human ear drum and surrounding tissues act in the same manner as the condenser plate of a radio receiver. He stuck one of his fingers into an ear of one of his audience, modulated a high frequency current by speaking into a transmitter, let the modulated current pass through his body to his finger tip to the man's ear. The man "heard" Mr. Grace's words. The man felt as though he were thinking Mr. Grace's phrases. It seemed like thought transference. No hocus-pocus was it, however, but an understandable, verifiable, physical-physiological hookup.