Does this mean that probably somewhere below that tower, there were operator stations that would have allowed any of the 5500 lines to connect to any of the other lines? How many simultaneous calls would that even be? Correct me if I borked this, but 5500!/(2^(5500/2)), perhaps?
It seems plausible that if the phone had only just been invented, you'd initially set up small systems that would in fact allow any line to connect to any line. That'd be fine for maybe even a few dozen lines. But as the image shows, that doesn't scale too well.
It seems plausible that if the phone had only just been invented, you'd initially set up small systems that would in fact allow any line to connect to any line. That'd be fine for maybe even a few dozen lines. But as the image shows, that doesn't scale too well.