People of a certain age will recall picking up the phone to place a call, and hearing the operator say, “Number Please”. The following is an interesting description of early telephone equipment.

The “something” visible over (what is now) the southwest corner of Fullerton’s Drug Store roof, is atop the telephone pole on the corner and it’s called an “X-BOX”, (cross-box), or BD BOX (buried distribution box). The horizontal pieces are the platform on which the technician sat to do his work. The vertical object is a galvanized steel cabinet with 2 ‘barn’ doors and a lock. 

Running up the pole into the bottom of the box, and placed under a “U-Guard” for protection, would be a pressurized lead-sheathed distribution cable made up of copper wires wrapped in paper that was placed in underground conduit, running from manhole to manhole back to the “Cable Vault” in the basement of the “Telephone Exchange”, (north and on the east side of Pitt behind where Jay-Gee Shoes used to be), where all the pairs were soldered onto lugs at the “distribution frame”.

Inside the box on the pole, the individual “pairs” were terminated to threaded “binding posts” fitted with washers and nuts to provide flexible connectivity so that when an installer (or repairman, -in the case of trouble) was dispatched to provide service to a new customer, he would climb the pole, using “climbers” (fitted with razor-sharp spurs) and either ‘cross-connect’ (with twisted, rubber insulated, jumper wire) the “in cable pair”  to a “cable pair” in an “aerial cable” going further down the line, or, directly connect a “drop wire” that ran, from the box, into the nearby residence or business.

In the case of this picture of Pitt & Second, the “cross-arms” on those poles indicate the “aerial” side of the network was something called an “Open Wire Plant “; so called because it was bare copper wire, arranged in pairs and attached to glass insulators mounted on the “cross arms”. 

The fact that it took up so much room on the poles dictated that only the very rich or “special services” had a “private line”. Everyone else shared a “line” with 7, (or maybe even), 9 other parties” and listened to see if the line was clear before making an outgoing call, and, –for their distinctive ringing combination of -1 long, or -2 long, or -1 long/1 short, or -1 long/2 short or -1 long/1 short/1 long …. for incoming calls. The switchboard operators knew every customer’s ring by heart and were the community’s lifeline to help in an emergency, 24 hours a day – every day…!  —Note by Ed Burns (Bell Canada, retired).

Note the wire fence in the bottom left corner. There are grates on the sidewalk on the left. These grates became visible again in 2011 following the fire at the first Truffles Restaurant. They were demolished and covered by Pommier’s Jewelers parking lot.