Das Fräulein vom Amt was the name given to the telephone operators at the beginning of the last century.

Young women were employed to connect phone calls in the days before direct dialling as their high voices carried better on the early telephone wires than the lower men’s voices. They did this by connecting sockets on a so-called Klappenschrank.

Whilst the need for this service reduced with the introduction of direct dialling, many calls to other countries were still connected manually and it was possible to reserve a time for a particular call in advance.

The job services in the form of the Telefonistin in emergency call centres and on the switchboard of large companies.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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Tags: Klappenschrank, Operator, Telefonie, Telefonistin

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Telephone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.