On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:29:17 -0500, Jim Redelfs
wrote:

In article ,
(David Combs) wrote:

Did "tip" and "ring" have something to do with the (tiny) "central office",
where the two women sat in front of this big board in which you actually
connected the phone calls, by pulling out a wire-and-plug (from the
caller's line?) and then stretched it across the board and plugged
it into the callee's socket, thus "connecting" the call, and then
maybe via crank or perhaps button, generated the "ringing" of the
bell on the callee's phone?

Yes.

However, local Operator service you describe was in place long before
the "pair" was introduced.

In smaller, local exchanges, the switchboard was often located in the
parlor of a local resident's home.

The Operator, usually the lady of the house, would go about her business
in the home, stopping to connect calls when they rang in.

She would dry her hands, proceed to the switchboard, don the "chestset"
(large horn-shaped transmitter hung from the neck that rested on the
sternum into which the Operator spoke) (not yet headset), and answer the
call, "Number please!".

Generally, the Operator went to bed at 9:00 or 10:00 PM Sunday through
Thursday and stayed up an hour to two longer on Friday and Saturday
night.

Outside those hours, one dare not ring-up the Operator unless there was
a true emergency, a baby was born,

or someone had died.

I always found it strange that death was treated as an emergency, as
if the deceased isn't going to be dead very long.

"Dad died last night but the doctor was slow getting here, so dad came
back to life." :-)