) Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Protocols Chapter 2 Figure 2-29 Meshed network; five users, ten circuits installed-all to allow 2,000 people to call each other. Obviously, some alternative solution was greatly needed. That solution was the switch. The first "switches" did not arrive until 1878 with the near-disas- trous hiring of young boys to work the cord boards in the first central offices. John Brooks, author of Telephone: The First 100 Years, offers the following: The year of 1878 was the year of male operators, who seem to have been an instant and memorable disaster. The lads, most of them in their late teens, were simply too impatient and high spirited for the job, which, in view of the imperfections of the equipment and the inexperience of the subscribers, was one demanding above all patience and calm. According to the late reminiscences of some of them, they were given to lightening the tedium of their work by roughhousing, shouting constantly at each other, and swearing frequently at the customers. An early visitor to the Chicago exchange said of it, "The racket is almost deafening Boys are rushing madly hither and thither, while others are putting in or taking out pegs from a central framework as if they were lunatics engaged in a game of fox and cheese. It was a perfect bedlam." Later in 1878 the boys were grabbed by their ears and removed from their operator positions, replaced quickly-and, according to a multitude Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Protocols Protocols of accounts, to the enormous satisfaction of the customers-by women, shown in Figure 2-30. These operators were, in fact, the first switches. Now, instead of ne