Good Bye Central Step by Step Switch At&T

Good Bye Central
The Step by Step Switch
AT&T Bell System

A film about the last few offices in the United States that, in the 1970s, had yet to convert to the dial system:

Catalina Island, California
Catalina Island has been an important little corner of the AT&T world. In fact, the link between Catalina and Los Angeles was the very first in the Bell System to be wireless. The island was linked to the mainland via a radiotelephony system all the way back in 1920. For having such a significant telephone technology first, it's ironic that this film chronicles the city's telephone technology "last".

Virginia City, Nevada
In the film, an operator — in fact, the only operator — who had been working in Virginia City since 1949 is interviewed about the prospective cutover (a cutover is a switch from one type of telephony system to another). She talks about the fact that they will have automation, and more than one operator. Virginia City hasn't grown much since then, however. The city proper still has a population of only around 850 people (2010 census).

St. Ignace, Michigan
As this city still used 1940s switchboards, the incipient electronic switching system was to completely change telephone operation in this sleepy summer tourist town. But towns with no dial service also had customers who couldn't get then-modern features like call waiting on their phones.

Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

The step switch (or Strowger switch) was the first automatic circuit switching device. It was used for most of the 20th century, mostly in smaller population regions. Soon after, the crossbar switch came into being: the crossbar switch was favored for large metro areas due to its higher density and greater number of circuits. The Original type could be identified by the number of pulses induced between dial strokes and the tone type could be identified by certain distinctive sounds they produced on the line.