Mt Holly Springs Telephone Exchange

When United Telephone prepared to go to dial service they had to buy out the incumbents who had provided magneto service and replace the lines and phones that were compatible.  They installed about ten miles of 50 or 100 pair cable on the path. They installed phones that support the dial service with the replacement of a blank faceplate with a dial.  Our phone number became 234J2.  Mt. Holly at that time had less than 300 lines (they fit on three boards in the exchange).  There were three other parties on the line, 234J1, 234R1 and 234R2.  If someone called us the operator would plug into their line, take our number, take the other plug on that cord pair, plug it into line 234, switch the ringer to our side of the cord and pull the ring key toward her in two ring patterns.  If the call had been to J1 on our line she would have pulled it toward herself in patterns of one long ring.   If the call were to the R2 party she would have pushed the ring key away from her in two ring patterns.  We could only hear the J rings, the R parties could only hear the R rings but only one party could use the line at a time. These lines had up to eight parties and continued to have them after the dial conversion for some time. 

When the dial conversion occurred the CO moved to a more “CO looking” building in the alley behind the old exchange.   The exchange name was Hunter six (today 486).   One exchange name allows for up to 10,000 lines.  Mt. Holly is still probably within that number but is probably getting close.  At one time these were seriously hardened buildings but as time went on the accountants got into the act and the reliability of phone service during natural disasters has deteriorated.  Total failure of telephone, cellular, and emergency services radio systems in New Orleans only made Katrina more of a disaster.  If you look at this building it is built like the proverbial brick outhouse.

Image by author.

The First Holly Dial CO

40° 6′55.89″N  77°11′23.86″W

This has been replaced, almost certainly for space reasons by a new and larger CO building along Pine Street but it is within two blocks of the original exchange.  Keeping it close made extending the existing lines to it easier and less costly.  To give an idea of the growth there were less than 75 phones on three lines that extend about five miles south on routes 34 and 94 in 1956.  There were about twenty magneto lines then with over 430 phones.  Today the number of phones will easily exceed ten times that number and more important almost all if not all are on private lines.  This means that those 4000 phones are not on 200 lines but 4000.   In 1950 not every home had a phone, in fact it was probably less than one in five.  A few years ago few homes didn’t.  The trend today is for some homes to have only cellular but that is only a small percentage.   If you are considering cell keep in mind that will be your emergency phone and it must be kept live and locatable.  Most still depend on two copper wires into the home to provide phone service, not far from the technology of early phone systems.

Image by author.

The Current Mt. Holly CO.