and where the modern relay multiple switchboard affords every facility for rapid intercommunication. So compact are these improved switchboards that each subscriber-line reappears in each and every section, thus enabling any one of the three operators allotted to a section to reach the jack connecting with the subscriber line of any one of the many subscribers connected to that given exchange even though they number ten thousand. Under these favorable conditions the average time in which 'Central' answers a calling subscriber rarely exceeds four seconds, and a local call is completed on an average of less than thirty-five seconds, the time consumed depending largely on the promptness with which the called subscriber responds to 'Central's' calling. Concerning the rapidity with which telephone connections were secured in pioneer days, we have a statement made in 1887, by Mr. B. E. Sunny, a man of exceptional ability, who was one of the first to comprehend the true function of telephone service and who strove to make his service the best that human effort and improved apparatus could make it. Mr. Sunny said:
It is also interesting to note that in 1884 Mr. Sunny started a school of instruction for telephone operators in Chicago. When an applicant appeared she was advised to enter this school and receive free instruction, and about one in four of the students were found competent to enter the regular service. When full, the class was composed of ten students. The teacher in charge was a former public school teacher, who had also served four years as an operator, monitor, chief operator, etc., under conditions that had enabled her to gain a thorough knowledge of the duties of an operator. The school apparatus consisted of three sections of switchboard and a dozen or more telephones connected up at different points in the school-room. Calls were sent in and connections made at the switchboards as nearly as possible according to regular practice. Mr. Sunny found that this method of training
