828 THE BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 19o2 



type of local central office equipment, called No. 5 crossbar, which was 

 designed with this in view. For older types of equipment, the job is 

 more difficult. 



2. The switching equipment must be provided with automatic means 

 for recording all of the information necessary for charging the call. In 

 the case of operator dialing this is now done manually by the operator. 



Great advances have been made in recent years in the development of 

 automatic message recording equipment. In 1944 there was placed in 

 service in California the first installation in this country of automatic 

 ticketing equipment. This equipment is associated with step-by-step 

 local switching equipment and automatically prints for each call a 

 ticket similar to that prepared by the operator with manual operation. 

 In 1948 there was installed in Media, near Philadelphia, a greatly im- 

 proved type of message recording equipment in which the information 

 appears in the form of punched holes in a tape. This equipment is 

 much more economical than the earlier system and also lends itself to 

 the automatic preparation of toll statements or bills. 



The present forms of equipment have been designed to be associated 

 with local central offices. A careful study has been made of their field 

 of application and of the basic plan necessary to provide for a general 

 nationwide extension of customer dialing. This indicates that there will 

 be a large field for automatic message accounting ecjuipment associated 

 wdth the toll network and arranged to receive orders for toll messages 

 from a number of local dial offices. This centralized AMA equipment, 

 as it is called, is under development and an initial installation will be 

 made next year in Washington, D. C. In this installation the range of 

 customer dialing will be limited and certain service features will be 

 lacking, which it is planned to add later. 



The nationwide extension of customer toll dialing involves many op- 

 erating problems in addition to those relating to the design of the 

 plant. These problems involve the extent to which customers wish to 

 dial long distance calls, requiring 10 pulls of the dial, the accuracy of 

 dialing, the treatment of WTong numbers, provision for giving subscribers 

 information regarding telephone numbers in distant cities, information 

 on charges and many other questions. 



Recognizing that the best way to develop these questions is a trial, 

 arrangements were made to open such a trial last fall at Englewood, 

 N. J. This office is equipped with a No. 5 crossbar system so that arrange- 

 ments for such a trial could readily be made there. The Englewood 

 customers are able to dial directly any of about eleven million telephones 

 in ten metropolitan areas scattered throughout the countiy, including 



