“ AN ANSWER FOR LINDA ” 1950s BELL TELEPHONE & SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR EDUCATIONAL FILM XD66164
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This 1950s color training film written and produced by David Bowen and Charles Palmer for Bell System by Jerry Fairbanks' Parthenon Pictures, follows a telephone operator named Billie Meade as she works for Bell System, one of the largest North American telecommunications companies. The film is framed around finding “an answer for Linda,” another employee and high school friend, as to why Billie is so efficient. The film starts with Billie’s husband dropping her off at work, where she enters through an “Employees Only” door (0:49). She gets a coffee and sits with other white female operators at a table (1:24). Some of Billie’s calls are shown: a mother in a green and white dress reading a letter from her daughter (1:41); a field engineer in a shirt and tie sitting at a desk; an elderly woman in a wheelchair putting a pill bottle on a table; a real estate lawyer sitting across a desk from a client (2:00); a telephone salesman exiting a phone booth to talk to a hotel clerk. Linda asks Billie for advice handling the mark sense signature and how to be better at her job (3:03). Mark sense technology developed by IBM allowed cards marked with a pencil to be converted into punch cards. These were necessary before automatic exchanges since operators had to route calls by connecting switchboard cords to the proper circuit to complete long-distance calls; they marked relevant information such as the caller’s name, address, and area code on mark sense cards. Billie sits at her switchboard wearing a headset (3:48) as a voiceover enumerates tips to be faster, such as having the cord ready to answer a signal operator, marking numbers as the customer gives them, and multitasking. Billie puts her headset on and checks in a mirror; she walks past a line of operators sitting at switchboards (4:53). Billie pulls a mark sense card from a slot and answers a call, saying, “Operator.” She marks the area code on the card, putting a single mark in each bubble and routes the call (5:42). Tips on how to be an efficient operator are emphasized as she gets a call from Denver (area code 303) (6:40) and punches number keys on the switchboard. She gets a long-distance call for Donald Harrigan, Associated Computers (7:22). Billie is shown multitasking; she answers several calls while connecting cords to circuits and marking names, D-bubbles, her personal number, and area codes on cards. Qualities of a good operator are emphasized in a voiceover: having good communication skills, knowing area codes from memory, and stamping tickets correctly. She gets a coin box Phoenix call (area code 602) and looks up the rate per minute in a table to collect the deposit (9:17). Another operator, Jan, sits next to Billie at the switchboard (10:58). Billie gets a Miami call (area code 305) that disconnects. She plugs a cord into a jack, and sticks the card into a gap on the switchboard. Billie performs other tasks: routing a collect call from Bob Griffin (14:08), collecting a 65-cent additional charge from Mr. Bishop in Yuma, Arizona (15:19), checking the index bulletin, and entering addresses and numbers on mark sense cards. She calls her supervisor, Ms. Reiswick, for help on how to fill out the card for a coin box call where the calling party wants the bill sent to him for overtime (16:01). She gets calls for Ft. Wayne, Indiana (16:32) and Las Vegas, Nevada. The camera zooms in on a clock on Billie’s desk (19:19), marking her relief time where another operator takes her place. An operator named Peg talks to Billie and says she’s always ‘one jump ahead;’ Billie realizes that’s her answer for Linda (20:13). A mark sense machine converts ticket marks to punch holes (20:52). The film ends with Billie and Linda talking on a green couch.
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Very good film, actually made between 1960 and 1963, judging by the automobiles at the start of the film.
Thanks Sherlock!
'61 Chevy
@@thomasm9139 I was going to mention that looked like about a '60s Chevy at the beginning myself....FRIEND
I thought the same. Cars from the early '60s.
That was intense! Who says women in the work place weren't extremely talented back in the 1950's and 1960's?
Pleasant , something rarely seen in society now.
Watching the tedium of this job makes me appreciate computers even more!!
And yet, these tedious actions were quite efficient in getting the job done and, at times, did a job better than an automated computer. 😁😁😁😁😁
Thanks for bringing back great memories of my time on the LD switchboard in the mid-60s. I still have my heavy graphite mechanical pencil for marking tickets.
Loved this ! Was a telephone operator myself from 1978 - 1998! Mostly international and overseas.
did you work on the TSPS system?
Thank you for this. My mother was a toll operator before I was born. This gives me insight on what she did.
That's awesome ... glad it helped you appreciate your Mom even more!!
Love these "industrial" films. Great window to history.
The scene of her processing calls was incredibly satisfying to watch - especially with the added over voice narration.
I love this kind of stuff! I love telephones and systems and clerical work and old how-to films.
Quite a bit of work those operators did back in those days.
I've worked a comparatively small PMBX.
Things get automatic and after a bit you can clip along at a fair rate. I had the advantage that all the lines were private and secure, so no fees to collect. The actual work they're doing in this film is boggling :)
I DO love a happy ending!! LOVE this film!
My mom was like Linda and became a nurse instead. Ended up marrying a doctor, too. My dad 🙂
🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
Back when you used to wait till 7:PM to make a call to get a much better rate on the call!
Or called on weekends. Years ago, I worked for a Canadian telecom, though not Bell. I used to work on Sundays and when my wife wanted to talk to relatives in Montreal, she'd call me at work and I would then transfer the call over my company's network, from my office in Toronto, to Montreal. This was before long distance competition and my company was not yet allowed to handle public long distance calls.
My mother-in-law and her sister had a system. Her sister had call-pack which allowed her to make local toll free calls. When my MIL wanted to talk to her sister, she'd ring her phone 3x, which was a signal for her sister to call her.
@@whatsamattayu3257 Yep, a friend's family did the same.
16:37 "The bulletin shows Fort Wayne as an...'other' place." Can confirm.
😂😂😂
In this context it actually means that Fort Wayne is not Bell (AT&T) territory but rather GTE.
My mother used to do this, starting in 1949.
50's? That was a '61 Chevy driving around.
Fascinating. 😁
Are there plans on adding these to TMDB and Letterboxd? The community for niche media on the latter would love this.
My older sister was an operator for Southwestern Bell in the 1960s. I don't know how she kept her sanity. Come to think of it, maybe this explains a lot.
Wow can I hire some of these women? lol
Get into your "way back" machine, fly it back to 1960 to any city in the US, and then start looking at temp agencies.
7:37 it almost sounded like "Witch-craft 2-4-9" from a little old witch customer trying to reach her friend.
After watching a 22-minute film, an operator was expected to master this sequence? Not a chance.
I always wondered what Peppermint Patty did when she grew up.
Absolutely Mind-Boggling!!
Woman are so smart!
But some are brighter and more responsible than others!
Better times then
The USA had just come out of two world wars, where thousands of Americans died, and was currently in a cold war. TIMES DEFINITELY WEREN'T BETTER
Ain't that the bloody truth
@@vicepresidentmikepence889
very subjective. it depends on what you consider “better”. My father born in 1935 was blue collar worked hard and was able to provide for me and four siblings. Bought us a home. Mom was a housewife and looked after the kids.
America was working.No school shootings. No Men pretending they're women.I can go on and on.I am old enough to know.
Give it time.People will have a implant in their body at birth.
Big brother will want to know about you
@@kamakaziozzie3038 No school shootings
I assume being all business was part of their training. It was nearly like AI before AI. It was a very proficient system.
1:14 10 cents for a cup of coffee in the cafeteria.
“She’s a bit brighter than the general female population but she has to be” lol not sexist at all
Good grief!😮
Man, the technology supporting this (switching, billing, etc.) is nuts. And I also notice that they use "o" (as in the letter) not the number zero for area codes (7-o-2 not 7-0-2), wonder why is? Maybe because o is faster to say than zero?
Most Americans over a certain age still use the letter O when saying a phone number aloud. Is this not something you do? Plus the O also will dial the Operator so it serves a dual purpose.
@@cyberGEK Also, at that time, all area codes only had a 1 or a 0 as a middle digit.
It depends upon the position. For an area code, it was necessary to keypulse seven-zero-two. However, in the exchange (the subsequent three digits), for example, if calling "LOgan 5," then she would have typed in a six, which corresponds to "MNO" on a telephone dial -- hence, five-six-five.
I'm sure the T.S.P.S. electronic system was a lot easier to work at
Easier, but less to do, and so many of the operators longed to go back.
There were few needs for mark-sense tickets in TSPS. The operator would start timing and then release the call from her position, so that AMA could rate and time it.
The difference with TSPS is that an operator only dealt with pieces of calls and had to become adept at responding to a position "seizure" with the correct phrase, based upon the lamps lit and any values in the Nixie display. For instance, one operator at a pay station collected the initial deposit of coins for the first three minutes, then would start timing and position release. After three minutes, a second operator would receive the same call with a lamp lit, indicating that she needed to announce that the initial period had ended. Again, she released the call to AMA. Finally, a third operator would receive the call, once the parties had hung up, in order to ring back the pay station to collect coins for overtime, as displayed in the Nixie.
Women are better at multitasking.
No such jobs no more.
Now if you must talk to a human being on the phone, they don’t speak fluent English. Thank God for email.
Alls well as long as the calling, receiving parties are cooperating, how polite everyone is, seems everything’s smooth what happens when problems arise, you don’t learn the flow of this job overnight.
When I was training (for the computer-console version), we had three weeks of training on a simulator, during which time, we occasionally worked a half-hour of live calls, with our trainer also plugged in to guide us.
Billy. I mean Isn't that a man's name
Was that a young Elizabeth Montgomery?
No, she was already making movies in Hollywood.
Good Heavens NO
all obsolete.
Sleep induction.
Not good time if you’re a minority back then.
Thank you for this wonderful gem!🙂💯💥👍🤍!
Glad you got to see it and -- that you love it! Thanks for being a sub too