Before the 1980s, Moccasin telephone calls were switched by a step by step Community Dial Office.
The company installed and opened the first commercial exchange in his then-home town of La Porte, Indiana on November 3, 1892, with about 75 subscribers and capacity for 99.
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The term seems to have originated in the era of the 7A Rotary system exchange, and was superseded by "Technician" circa 1960, perhaps because "Mechanician" was no longer considered appropriate after the first Strowger switch exchanges began to be introduced in 1952 (in Auckland, at Birkenhead, New Zealand exchange).
Almon Brown Strowger, who invented the principle of the Strowger switch in 1888