1935 Linen Postcard Of San Francisco Chinese Telephone Exchange

The back side of the post card...:

"San Francisco's quaint Chinatown Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co building was erected in 1909 to conform with Chinese architectural traditions. It houses what is beleived to be the only Chinese language telephone exchange ouside of China itself"

 

 

This is an early Audichron Intercept announcement machine of the type in use for many years by AT&T when Jane Barbe was the "Queen Of The Telephone Voices" . This photo shows both the electronic and tape loop frames as they would have been mounted in the CO. The loop tape contained 15 audio and one "timing" track. Sometimes the tape contained 15 different announcements, and sometimes it contained 15 copies of the SAME announcement - time staggered to begin a few seconds apart so that a caller on-line (and thus trunk time) was minimized waiting for a recording to start. The tape loop mechanism was usually covered by a clear plastic cover to keep out dust of prevent someone from getting their clothing snagged in the moving mechanism as they walked down the aisle in the CO.

Later machines, such as the one I have, were solid state - with the audio being stored on RAM's. The RAM's broke the announcement down into several phrase segments, and stored them  at different memory locations, which increased the CCS capacity and could therefore handle more calls per hour then the old machines since as soon as the first phrase .of the announcement was played that memory was available to play the phrase for the next caller. The unit I have looks like this one, but it is only a single card cage and obviously has no tape loop drive. JimC/San Francisco