Enfield switchboard 

Video transcript

So here we are just one small section of the switchboard from Enfield telephone exchange as it was in the manual era. It's going on show in the Science Museum to represent Enfield in 1960. 

I'm one of a team of actors who work at the Science Museum. I've been asked to prepare the role of a telephonist from Enfield Exchange in 1960 so I've been developing the character based on research. 

So these are three positions then for three operators to sit at. You have to keep your elbows to yourself don't you otherwise I wouldn't be very popular. So if I was the operator at this board those would be my subscribers. So I'd be speaking to them possibly quite regularly, well, regular callers of course,  would get to know the voices of them.

The operators of the manual switchboard meant that it had this human feel about it. Of course the supervisors were really quite strict. They wanted to make sure that their girls were sort of behaving decorously and properly in the switch room.

I've heard some stories saying where you can't say 'loo' or 'lavvy' so they would actually put their hand up and ask for an urgent break. That's right isn't it? I think that's right. I was trying to think what the word is. Yes, it's urgent. 

It's not only the etiquette, there's the elocution and how the ladies were trained. There was a process. You couldn't engage in conversation. 

The operators were working so close together they generally built up quite a bit of teamwork so you could imagine when the time came to convert Enfield away from manual to automatic it must have been a bit traumatic.

Absolutely. It's the people that you're working with and that interaction it was at a time when people tended to stay in a job and so it mattered a lot more to them and it was something rather special breaking up. 

So when the time came in October 1960 the calls gradually died away and all the plugs were cleared and they said all clear. Within a minute or two the switchboard which had been alive was now dead. 

A few moments later the calls cut in the new auto and at that time all the switchboard operators pushed back the chairs and came out into the middle of the room. They joined hands and they all sang Auld Lang Syne. 

It's a very emotional very dramatic of story isn't it? Yes, but what it shows is that people cared as some of them said behind each of these Jacks is a human being.

End of transcript.