Brown Telephone Company

My sister, Sue Nuckles, was a telephone operator for United Telephone for years. Although this picture was probably taken before she was born, she was very familiar with this old switchboard.

Here's what she had to say about it:

 I worked on that cord board. I think at the time it was nearly 100 years old and it was still working when they took it out. 

 It could do more than the computerized crap they brought in to replace it.  With the old cord board, somebody could call in and say "I can't get Mom's phone to ring.  I'm worried about her."  We could force the phone to ring by dialing the number over and over.  We would tell the customer that he/she would not be able to hear us but we were working on the call, close the key and put up the call over and over until we could get the phone to ring.  It was complicated but it worked.  We might have 20 cords up and we had to keep checking each one to see if the phone was ringing.  Once we got it to ring we would move the waiting customer to that circuit and take down the rest of the cords. When they brought in the computerized boards, we couldn't do that anymore.  The customers were mad. 

Then there was a change at the CEO level.  He was from Ohio.  The Warrensburg office was going to be the call center for the entire US.  This guy moved it to Ohio.  He said the Ohio operators were not going to be laid off. So, the Warrensburg operators were laid off.  

United Telephone started out in the 20's as Brown Telephone Company, founded by Clayson Brown.   http://www.sprint.com/companyinfo/history/

Clayson Brown built his company offering service to farmers and little towns that Bell and the other big companies didn't want.  If a farmer wanted a telephone in the middle of a corn field, he would put the phone in the middle of the field.  All the neighbors knew it was there and would use it too.  In those days, they didn't put up poles, they just ran the cable on the farmer's fence posts.  Laws were later passed preventing the use of fence posts.

The name of the company was changed to United Telephone sometime in the '70's I think.  I remember when United Telephone completed the buyout of Sprint.  Because Sprint was a more recognizable name, they started using it.  Everything became United Telephone dba Sprint.

Here is another informative website.

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/special-reports/19-people-who-changed-face-wireline-telecom-industry/cleyson-brown-founder-brown-tel