“ AN ANSWER FOR LINDA ” 1950s BELL TELEPHONE & SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR EDUCATIONAL FILM XD66164 

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This 1950s color training film written and produced by David Bowen and Charles Palmer for Bell System by Jerry Fairbanks' Parthenon Pictures, follows a telephone operator named Billie Meade as she works for Bell System, one of the largest North American telecommunications companies. The film is framed around finding “an answer for Linda,” another employee and high school friend, as to why Billie is so efficient. The film starts with Billie’s husband dropping her off at work, where she enters through an “Employees Only” door (0:49). She gets a coffee and sits with other white female operators at a table (1:24). Some of Billie’s calls are shown: a mother in a green and white dress reading a letter from her daughter (1:41); a field engineer in a shirt and tie sitting at a desk; an elderly woman in a wheelchair putting a pill bottle on a table; a real estate lawyer sitting across a desk from a client (2:00); a telephone salesman exiting a phone booth to talk to a hotel clerk. Linda asks Billie for advice handling the mark sense signature and how to be better at her job (3:03). Mark sense technology developed by IBM allowed cards marked with a pencil to be converted into punch cards. These were necessary before automatic exchanges since operators had to route calls by connecting switchboard cords to the proper circuit to complete long-distance calls; they marked relevant information such as the caller’s name, address, and area code on mark sense cards. Billie sits at her switchboard wearing a headset (3:48) as a voiceover enumerates tips to be faster, such as having the cord ready to answer a signal operator, marking numbers as the customer gives them, and multitasking. Billie puts her headset on and checks in a mirror; she walks past a line of operators sitting at switchboards (4:53). Billie pulls a mark sense card from a slot and answers a call, saying, “Operator.” She marks the area code on the card, putting a single mark in each bubble and routes the call (5:42). Tips on how to be an efficient operator are emphasized as she gets a call from Denver (area code 303) (6:40) and punches number keys on the switchboard. She gets a long-distance call for Donald Harrigan, Associated Computers (7:22). Billie is shown multitasking; she answers several calls while connecting cords to circuits and marking names, D-bubbles, her personal number, and area codes on cards. Qualities of a good operator are emphasized in a voiceover: having good communication skills, knowing area codes from memory, and stamping tickets correctly. She gets a coin box Phoenix call (area code 602) and looks up the rate per minute in a table to collect the deposit (9:17). Another operator, Jan, sits next to Billie at the switchboard (10:58). Billie gets a Miami call (area code 305) that disconnects. She plugs a cord into a jack, and sticks the card into a gap on the switchboard. Billie performs other tasks: routing a collect call from Bob Griffin (14:08), collecting a 65-cent additional charge from Mr. Bishop in Yuma, Arizona (15:19), checking the index bulletin, and entering addresses and numbers on mark sense cards. She calls her supervisor, Ms. Reiswick, for help on how to fill out the card for a coin box call where the calling party wants the bill sent to him for overtime (16:01). She gets calls for Ft. Wayne, Indiana (16:32) and Las Vegas, Nevada. The camera zooms in on a clock on Billie’s desk (19:19), marking her relief time where another operator takes her place. An operator named Peg talks to Billie and says she’s always ‘one jump ahead;’ Billie realizes that’s her answer for Linda (20:13). A mark sense machine converts ticket marks to punch holes (20:52). The film ends with Billie and Linda talking on a green couch.
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