How did operator long distance toll dialing work in the 50s and 60s?

Question

anyone who was an operator can get 10 points!! I'm wondering how you would operate calls? did every phone line with bell have its own wire to its company? if you had to manually connect the wires, I don't understand how the automatic long distance switchers did that. Here is what I do understand:

1. operator plugs herself in with you.

2. operator then plugs you into an open long distance switcher computer for which city you want.

3. operator dials the number.

how does the switcher try all the lines and find an open one?

Answer 1

Every phone line still has it's own wire to the central office!  Manual switchboard's were in most central offices and really started disappearing for electromechanical ones right around the 50's and 60's particularly for long distance calls.  A manual exchange worked as follows:

You call out, a light would show up on the operators board.  The operator would plug a wire in preparation to connect you to a destination.  The operator would hit a switch and ask you where you wanted to be connected to.  If it was a local extension, the operator would connect the other end of the wire to the other extension and pull a switch the ring the line.  A light would tell the operator when the conversation was done and they could remove the wire.  

For long distance the operator could eventually direct dial on a long distance trunk for a customer.  Before that they'd have to manually connect to a trunk for that city and another operator would in turn connect the call manually to the desired party.  Often a call would have to be routed through numerous trunks which yielded noisy, static filled connections still associated with long distance calls to this day.  

Electromechanical switches had a long sweeping arm that would check for open lines.  When it found one it'd stop there and make the connection.

Answer 2

did you ever watch SNL??? Saturday Night Life ....remember...Ernestine.... the telephone operator....yes, this the way it was....one-ringy-dingy....two ringy-dingy...everything had to be done manually....!

We're The Phone Company

I saw this sketch on SNL one time. Lily Tomlin reprises Ernestine the telephone operator from her Laugh-In days (insert snorts as appropriate):

Here at the Phone Company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to scum of the earth. We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order [plucks plug out of switchboard], or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make.

We don't care.

Watch this - [bangs on a switch panel like a cheap piano] just lost Peoria.

You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it ? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string.

[loud, booming "Liquid Plummer" voice-over] We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.

(Text source: "Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years", 1994 Cader Company. I saw it on SNL and loved it!)