as well as perform the work of reaching the called telephone or party 

 and of establishing the connection. Improvements in toll plant 

 contributed to the feasibility of this type of operation. Such a plan 

 would eliminate the need for a separate recording board but would 

 increase the number of outward line positions required. It also would 

 bring in new problems of training and supervision. With the pro- 

 posed method it appeared that the speed of service on long distance 

 calls might be considerably improved by virtue of the fact that it 

 would no longer be necessary to send tickets from one position to 

 another within the office. Furthermore, with this method it would be 

 unnecessary for the operator to dismiss the customer after he had 

 given her his call and to recall him when ready with the connection. 

 Instead the customer could remain at the telephone while the line 

 operator attempted to complete his call. 



Under the CLR method of operating, now in use, the customer dials 

 or asks for long distance in the usual way. The signal at the long 

 distance board appears before the line operator who answers with the 

 words "Long Distance." The line operator records the call in the 

 usual way except that when the customer gives the name of the called 

 place and the number of the called telephone she takes up a circuit to 

 the called place and records the information on the ticket while waiting 

 for the inward operator at the called place to answer. After passing 

 the called number to the inward operator and while waiting for the 

 called telephone to answer, she asks the calling party for his telephone 

 number. Conversation is timed and the ticket disposed of in the 

 usual way. 



Under the single-ticket method calls to or via a given city are 

 always handled by the same group of operators. Under the CLR 

 method any line operator may handle a call to any place in the toll 

 system. If the call is not completed on the first attempt, the ticket 

 is sent to the so-called point-to-point positions where calls to a given 

 city are assigned to positions designated to handle calls only to that 

 city. This assures prompt and careful handling of those calls which 

 have encountered delay and the handling of such calls does not inter- 

 fere with the handling of work on new calls at the CLR position. 



It may be of interest to follow the handling of a call by the CLR 

 method. Figure 21 shows schematically the route of a long distance 

 call through the telephone plant, and the functions performed by the 

 various operators along the route while handling the call by the CLR 

 method. Let us assume that the call in question is a station-to-station 

 paid call from an individual line dial telephone in New York to an 

 individual line telephone in Chicago. The New York subscriber 



55 



