354 Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe 



office is thus lost in manipulating shutters. At one time the 

 company employed a number of automatic commutators (Ceder- 

 gren and Ericsson's well-known patent) for groups of from three 

 to twenty-five subscribers ; but as the number of daily connections 

 grew these ceased to give satisfaction, while their operation 

 necessitated special arrangements at the exchange. During the 

 conversion to metallic circuit they were all consequently swept 

 away within Stockholm and vicinity, and only a few left working 

 in the remoter villages. Subscribers of Class IV. were originally 

 provided with connection counters, with the idea of facilitating 

 the charging of communications in excess of those covered by the 

 annual subscription ; but, although satisfactory as counters, they 

 sensibly increased the expense of installing and maintaining the 

 subscribers' instruments, and, after all, did not obviate the neces- 

 sity of keeping registers at the exchange, since they did not 

 discriminate between the different classes of connections. They 

 have now been taken out, and accounts are rendered from notes 

 taken by the operators. 



State system. The State Stockholm system is worked with 

 only one central station, in which a metallic circuit, single-cord, 

 series jack board with an ultimate capacity of 10,000 has been 

 fitted. The board has a separate test wire and is practically on 

 the Western Electric Company's plan, but it was made by 

 Ericsson & Co., Stockholm. The workmanship leaves nothing 

 to be desired, while the care and neatness with which it has been 

 fitted up are worthy of all praise. The jacks are arranged so that 

 they can be unfastened and partially withdrawn from the front for 

 inspection or repair. While admiring the workmanship and the 

 skill displayed in the fitting, the author sees no reason to depart 

 from the opinion he has always held that the single-cord system, 

 at least as applied by the Western Electric Company, is 

 emphatically a fish that is not worth frying. The additional cost 

 and intricacy of construction are out of all proportion to the 

 advantage gained, which, indeed, is mostly imaginary. This 

 Stockholm board is stated by the engineers in charge to have 

 cost about 50 per cent, more than an ordinary double-cord 

 Western Electric would have done, against which they set an 

 estimated gain of ten minutes in the hour in rapidity of working. 



