CHAPTER XXIV 



AUTOMATIC TELEPHONE EXCHANGES 



At the conclusion of the previous chapter I undertook to 

 compare the organisation which is found in the brain and 

 spinal cord to that seen in an extensive telephone system. 

 It would have suited our purpose very well to have gone 

 on board a great battleship and learned there how the 

 work of the whole crew is regulated from the captain's 

 quarters by telephone and other means. The captain's 

 quarters constitute the cranial chamber of a battleship. 

 There the brains are placed which are ever receiving in- 

 formation and dispatching orders. The work done on 

 the bridge, within the gun turrets, in the engine-room 

 and stokehole, and in the stewards' quarters, are timed 

 and regulated from the ship's cranial chamber. The 

 various services on a battleship have their representatives 

 in the organisation of the human body. Or we might 

 have selected our example from France and examined the 

 telephone system which is laid down to link a general to 

 the army under his command. Either of these examples 

 would have answered our present needs excellently had it 

 been our purpose to work out the telephone system of 

 the body in detail. That, however, would have led us too 

 far afield. All that we can do is to take a glimpse at 

 one or two of the complex exchange systems used in the 

 human body. For our representative sample we shall go 

 neither to a battleship nor to an army, but to a smiling 

 rural English town where the local exchange, managed 

 by a single operator, serves the needs of three hundred 

 subscribers. The subscribers, if they desire, can make 

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