HOW IT WORKS: We continue the story from 1903 about a revolutionary new telephone system in Bradford.

“By the new system just installed all the subscriber has to do in order to signal the exchange is to take his telephone receiver off the hood, the hook flies upward, and at once a tiny incandescent lamp glows in front of the operator, and stays alight until she answers the call by inserting a plug into the individual switch immediately adjacent to the lamp. The plug inserted, the lamp goes out automatically, extinguished the moment its signal is attended to. The operator takes the order and with a second plug joins the line through to that of the subscriber it is desired to talk with.

Now right here comes one of the prettiest features of the common battery system. Every telephone user knows how difficult it is to remember to give the “ring off” signal. If with the old system you habitually do not “ring off,” the telephone operator necessarily has to supervise your line to make sure that it is not left connected to another long after you and your correspondent have finished with the conversation, and every has, more of less, been annoyed by the query “are you through?” interjected from the exchange at some slight pause in the conversation.

“All this, with the new system, is done away with, for the electric lamps referred to indicate, automatically, when either or both parties are through talking. The act of the subscriber in removing and replacing the receiver on the hook gives the signal to the operator.”

More to come on the revolutionary new telephone system.