Talk about a trip down memory lane! Most young people would have no idea about ‘party lines’, or ‘bureaux’ in relation to telephones.
I had a fascinating hour or more with an old telephone technician, Don Guthrie,
a sprightly 83 year old who now volunteers at MOTAT in the tele
-communications workshop.
Don Guthrie was born in Westmere, and began work in 1949 in Wellesley Street at the Auckland Central Exchange where all juniors received an introduction to the work of
a technician before transferring to an exchange closer to home. So it was at the Ponsonby Automatic Exchange that Don’s work really began, even though he says as a junior he did all the menial tasks like tea making, buying the lunches and running errands. He worked out of Ponsonby Exchange for a year, and says he was also “taught a little about how an exchange worked”.
Some of the Ponsonby staff at that time may be remembered by older folk, or their families. The Supervising Technician was Frank (Mac) McDermott. Technicians Trevor Simpson and Shorty Grey, lived in Ponsonby. Albie Bates was a respected sporting masseur and Les Dewhurst was an Englishman who also taught music and played the organ at a local church.
The Ponsonby Exchange equipment from 1925 to the early 1960s was Western Electric made in Belgium. Don showed me two other types: The Swedish Erickson and 2000 type Step by Step. All three are on display at MOTAT. It was easy to get lost in the clear but complicated descriptions of how those machines worked.
The earliest automatic exchange in Auckland was in Fort Street in the early 1920s and was a pre-2000 Strowger of about 500 lines.
The main display is a Western Electric rotary exchange. The rotary system is indirect- calling technology where the pulses from a telephone dial are loaded into a register. School groups are told it is a computer which in some ways is correct because it is the register that determines the setting of the selectors to connect the calling subscriber to the called subscriber. Got that?
In the 1950s a direct-dialling type of equipment was introduced to New Zealand called 2000 type Step by Step and with this system the exchange selectors were under control of the person calling from the telephone. This system was installed in Ponsonby and survived until digital was installed in the 1980s. Don Guthrie pointed out a Step by Step PABX system (private automatic branch exchange) with a much smaller system in the middle of it to show a size comparison with the new digital system; diminished in size amazingly, and even more in the last 20 years.
Before digital was introduced electro-mechanical exchanges were very labour intensive. Fifty-five automatic exchanges from Papatoetoe to Wellsford employed over 600 technical staff. As well, Don told me, unions kept computers out of exchanges as long as they could so all the fault, maintenance and management detail was written on time -consuming paper records.
It was surprising to learn that although the telephone was only invented in 1876, the first New Zealand exchange was set up in 1880.
One fascinating fact which Don explained was the 111 dialling system. Overseas, people dial 999 for emergency services. Don said New Zealand was one of the few countries to have a 0, 1-9 clockwise dialling system, rather than a 0, 9-1 system. The reason was non-technical and was believed to be some sort of copyright requirement. Whether 111 or 999 is used for emergency calling, it is always nine impulses from the dial for each number. The reason was that when a large number of overhead lines were on open aerial they could bump together in the wind.
Don Guthrie retired in 1991 as a divisional manager for Telecom. He had previously spent 10 years as an inspector of exchanges travelling from Te Kao in the far north to Taumarunui. The last manual exchange in New Zealand was in Maungakaramea in Northland until 1998.
My wife’s grandfather lived in Maungakaramea, and he used to complain a bit that his ‘bureau’ costs were too high. That word ‘bureau’ comes from the name of the office where people had to go to make overseas calls in earlier times.
We’ve come a long way from turning a handle, long-short-long, but the veteran phone man, Don Guthrie, has kept up to date and probably should write a book to tell his very interesting story. (JOHN ELLIOTT)
MOTAT welcomes visitors. The communications section, manned by volunteers, is open every Tuesday. www.motat.org.nz