The chattering era dawned with the opening of a ‘telephone exchange’. Initially there were few subscribers to the service, mainly businesses.
In its heyday the telephone exchange employed up tp twenty operators. Along with this was the line staff, eight or nine men who kept the system in South Wairarapa running, fixing both line and equipment faults. The original system had so many moving parts there always seemed to be faults.
To operate a little crank handle on the phone was given a sharp turn. This would flick open a ‘shutter’ on the board at the exchange. Alerted, the operator would ask “number Please” and then connect the shutter to that subscriber’s with a retractable cord. Then give the recipient’s phone a couple of short rings to signal the incoming call.
‘Party lines’ enabled many subscribers to connect to the limited number of lines available. These would have a number of subscribers sharing the same number each with a Morse Code letter as identification. Our code was ‘S’ with the call sign of three short rings. Party lines had the phone jangling away all day, however the ear became attuned to your call, others went unnoticed.
A big drawback to party lines was that only one person could use it at a time. Before calling the receiver was picked up to check if it was in use. The ‘click’ of the receiver could be heard by any others using the line alerting them to somebody else wanting a turn. If a would be user thought that those on the line had enjoyed more than enough chat the pick up would be accompanied by an enquiry “working?” uttered progressively more aggressively if those on the line did not take the hint.
Calls to subscribers outside the area were expensive. The operator had to find connections through various exchanges from Featherston to wherever the connection was to be made. The operator to take the number you required and ring back when all the connections had been made.
Due to the rigmarole required incoming ‘toll calls’ had precedence over local calls. If there was an incoming toll the operator would interrupt a conversation saying, “your line is required for a toll”. A polite way of saying “get off the line”.
During slow periods operators would sometimes ‘listen in’ to conversations – a clear breach of regulations. A standing joke was that if you wanted something spread around town just mention it on the phone, the exchange staff would do the spreading.
The manual telephone system was changed to the automatic one in 1975. The Martinborough in 1976 and Greytown in 1977.
