Switchboards came into use shortly after the invention of the telephone in 1876. Small towns typically had the operator's switchboard installed in the operator's home so that she could answer calls on a 24 hour basis. In 1894, New England Telephone and Telegraph installed the first battery-operated switchboard on January 9 in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Early switchboards in large cities usually were mounted floor to ceiling. The operators were boys who would scoot up a ladder to connect to the higher jacks. Operators were almost always women until the mid-1960s when men were once again hired. The early "cord" switchboards were often referred to as "cordboards" by telephone company personnel.

As telephone exchanges converted to automatic, or direct dial, service, switchboards remained in use for specialized purposes. Before the advent of direct-dialed long distance calls, a subscriber would need to contact the long-distance operator in order to place a call. In large cities, there was often a special number, such as 1-1-2, which would ring the long-distance operator directly . In other cities, the subscriber would ask the local operator to ring the long-distance operator.

When calling long distance, the customer often would not have the phone number available, so would simply ask for the name and city of the person desired. The long distance operator would plug into the trunk for the distant city, and the inward operator in the distant city would answer, obtain the number from their local information operator, and ring the call.


Later, with the advent of operator dialing, the operator would plug into a trunk line and dial the area code and operator code for the information operator in the distant city. If the customer knew the number, and the point was direct-dialable, the operator could dial the call. If the distant city did not have dialable numbers, the operator would dial the code for the inward operator, and ask her to ring the number.

After most phone subscribers had direct long-distance dialing, one type of operator served both the local and long distance functions. A customer might call to request help getting through on a number that did not ring, or might be out of order, for instance. If the number was in a distant city, the operator would call the inward operator in the destination city, and ask her to try the number, or to test a line to see if it was busy or out of order.