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Telephone Exchanges on Retirement


By Anne Elmer and Jørgen Krogh

In their thirties – and far too old! This is not the title of a new TV programme, but the destiny of hundreds of telephone exchanges that have been closed down during the last few years in the name of the digitalization. The oldest are from the 1960’s and not at all worn out. We have erected an active monument to the memory of them at Post & Tele Museum.


At the end of 1998, the digitalization of the Danish telephone centrals will be accomplished. The users of the telephone are experiencing the digitalization through many new possibilities such as numbers showing, switching the landline telephone through to the mobile phone, "knock-knock function", and number-specified ringing.

The new technique has many more functions and takes up much less space than the large analogous, relay-controlled exchanges that are now being replaced. When the analogous exchanges were introduced in the 1960’s and 1970’s, they were called "fully automatic" and in many places they replaced the personal service, the telephone operators. With the loss of human contact the customers gained the possibility of direct dialling in increasingly larger areas.

One of the youngest – and largest – exhibits in the museum is an analogous exchange, an ARK 522. The exchange was obtained from Jutland, put together by parts from the exchanges in Bendstrup and Skødstrup respectively. Together with the exchange the museums received very extensive documentation material which may prove useful in connection with future repairs. Our new exhibit should preferably be an actively functioning exchange for many years for the old and new telephones which the public gets the opportunity to test in our exhibitions.

A Rural Exchange with no "Operator Lady"

The ARK exchange system was developed by the Swedish company L. M. Ericsson Ltd. and used in very large parts of the world. In Denmark the ARK system was only used in the concession of the previous Jydsk Telefon A/S. However, there was even an ARK exchange in operation in Gedser for a short period of time.

Within Jydsk Telefon the ARK system was used as a local exchange in the small towns and rural districts and was also called "a register-free terminal exchange" which in everyday speech became a "rural exchange". Because of the missing registers an ARK exchange was dependent of a mother exchange. A mother exchange was a town exchange like e.g. Silkeborg with a number of subordinated rural exchanges. All calls from a rural exchange had to go through the registers of a mother exchange in order to be established.

A special thing about the ARK exchange system was that it was possible to equip the exchanges with an emergency register. This was important to the small islands around Jutland, such as Fanø, Endelave, Tunø, and Anholt. In case of bursting of the submarine cables the islanders would have possibility to phone as all calls should through a large mother exchange situated on the mainland as mentioned above. The island exchanges therefore used emergency registers which enabled the individual exchange to put calls through locally on the island even if the connection to the mother exchange had been interrupted.

At Post & Tele Museum it is not possible to connect the recently established ARK 522 exchange with a mother exchange. The exchange has therefore been provided with an emergency register. Consequently, we can compare the arrangement at the museum with the situation on the island of Anholt if the submarine cable to Grenå had just been rent by an anchor.


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