The General Toll Switching Plan was a systematic nationwide effort by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) of organizing the telephone toll circuits and cable routes of the nation, and of streamlining the operating principles and technical infrastructure for connecting long-distance telephone calls in North America. This involved the design of a hierarchical system of toll-switching centers, a process that had found substantial maturity by 1929. The switching plan was principally operated by the Long Lines division of the Bell System in cooperation with independent telephone companies under the decree of the Kingsbury Commitment, reached with the United States government in 1913. The General Toll Switching Plan was a system manually operated by long-distance telephone operators. It was the forerunner of an automated system called Nationwide Operator Toll Dialing that was begun in 1943, which eventually led to Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) within the framework of the North American Numbering Plan decades later. Long-distance telephone service In the same manner that early telephone users developed an increasing desire to talk to each other, and expected the service to reach farther out and increase the number of participating private and business customers locally, so did users in different towns and cities desire to call each other. However, the state of the technology initially had limitation in distance, and telephone companies developed on a local basis, usually one company for each community. As the technology of telephones and of line construction improved, logistical problems stood in the way of rapid expansion. Solutions had to be found for organizational structure, management, business relationships, collaboration, to operate telephone services between or across multiple communities. Theodore Newton Vail, General Manager of the American Bell Telephone Company, created the vision for this endeavor. The first long-distance experiment was the Boston–New York telephone line. Vail suggested that a company separately from the four or five affected local telephone companies should be responsible for the construction and operation of the line. Approved in 1880, he directed American Bell Telephone to incorporate a new entity in New York, the Inter-State Telephone Company for the construction of the first section starting in Boston, with the grant of a license by American Bell. An additional company was formed in Connecticut to complete the line to New York. The Boston–New York toll line opened in 1884, Building additional long-distance lines would require enormous amounts of financing. However, the Massachusetts legislature rejected