SWITCHBOARD • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Switchboard

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noun

switchboard n.

An elctrical apparatus consisting predominantly of a panel on which are switches or other means of completing electrical circuits; used especially for the devices used in telephone exchanges. See sense 2.

(Telephone) An apparatus containing switches by means of which a connection may be made from an incoming telephone line to any one of numerous outgoing lines. The switches may be either mechanical or electronic, and the switching action may be automatic, controlled by signals in the incoming call, or manual, controlled by a switchboard operator. In older style manual switchboards, the circuits were connected by the use of patchcords, inserted into plugs.

Synonyms: patchboard, plugboard, telephone exchange.

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Etymology of 'Switchboard'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Switchboard" Quotes from Famous Books

... vasomotor centers. The word motor made me feel like a sick automobile. I begged to keep my clothes on; I insisted; I promised to come tomorrow; but it wasn't any good, and in a few minutes he was hitting me harder than either of the two before. Maybe I was more tender! He electrocuted me extra from a switchboard, ran red-hot needles into my legs, and finally, after banging me around the room, said I was the strongest and wellest man who had ...

— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... a whole switchboard full o' nickel-plated muckin's which I haven't begun to play with yet. The starboard side's crawlin' ...

— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... comparing the marks on the door and the record made on the dynamometer, when the office telephone rang and Langhorne was summoned to answer it. Instead of taking the call in his own office, he chose to answer it at the switchboard, perhaps because that would allow him to keep ...

— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... restored. That is why, in organisms unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of the switchboard on which the paths called sensory and the paths called motor intersect—that is, of ...

— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... assurance doubly sure, he telephoned the St. Simon while waiting for Shultz to fetch a taxicab. The switchboard operator at that establishment replied in the affirmative to his enquiry as to whether or not Mrs. Ilkington and Miss Searle ...

— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... was indeed a small one. From its scattered four corners, into which his subterranean wires of espionage stretched, would in time come some inkling, some hint, some discovery. And at the converging center of those wires Blake was able to sit and wait, like the central operator at a telephone switchboard, knowing that the tentacles of attention were creeping and wavering about dim territories and that in time they would render up ...

— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... However, when Charlotte came to my side I whispered for her to keep the man waiting while I darted out into the corridor and slipped downstairs, where the girl at the switchboard put an instrument into the circuit for me. ...

— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... 'my telephone is out of order'?" Rebener glanced up sharply. "I used it not twenty minutes ago." And going into the adjoining room he tried to speak to the floor switchboard. ...

— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... quick call on the inside switchboard, determined to fight to override the veto I was sure ...

— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart

... radiologists and surgeons were working around Lee. Some were attaching electrodes to parts of Lee's body to maintain the electrical impulses necessary to keep his vital processes in motion while the main switchboard was out of commission. Others were sensitizing the exposed brain, from which the skull had already been removed, to guide the delicate fingers of the huge automatic Operating, Recording and Calculating Complex ...

— Am I Still There? • James R. Hall

... to the telephone on the wall. This connected with a central switchboard from which he knew he could reach his own stateroom—provided Rusty had ...

— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... is provided by microwave radio relay and coaxial cable, with open wire and obsolete electromechanical and manual switchboard systems still in use in rural areas; starting in the 1980s, a substantial amount of digital switch gear has been introduced for local and long-distance service; long-distance traffic is carried mostly by coaxial cable and low-capacity microwave radio ...

— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... woodwork in the building that it would burn readily, and a short circuit in the electrical installation was always possible, though every device had been adopted to render it not only improbable but harmless. After midnight the door bells and others communicated with a switchboard in the watchman's room; and a burglary alarm, which the man adjusted during his first round, rang there continuously ...

— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

Words linked to "Switchboard" : switchboard operator, telephone exchange, telephone system, exchange, phone system