ed with magneto systems employing simple switchboards or
transfer switchboards, and which require new switchboards by virtue of
having outgrown or worn out their old ones, the magneto multiple
switchboard is frequently found to best fit the requirements of economy
and good practice. The reason for this is that by its use the magneto
telephones already in service may be continued, no change being required
outside of the central office. Furthermore, with the magneto multiple
switchboard no provision need be made for a power plant, which, in towns
of small size, is often an important consideration. Again, many
companies operate over a considerable area, involving a collection of
towns and hamlets. It may be that all of these towns except one are
clearly of a size to demand magneto equipment and that magneto equipment
is the standard throughout the entire territory of the company. If,
however, one of the towns, by virtue of growth, demands a multiple
switchboard, this condition affords an additional argument for the
employment of the magneto multiple switchboard, since the same standards
of equipment and construction may be maintained throughout the entire
territory of the operating company, a manifest advantage. On the other
hand, it may be said that the magneto multiple switchboard has no proper
place in modern exchanges of considerable size--say, having upward of
one thousand subscribers--at least under conditions found in the United
States.

Notwithstanding the obsolescence of the magneto multiple switchboard for
large exchanges, a brief discussion of some of the early magneto
multiple switchboards, and particularly of one of the large ones, is
worth while, in that a consideration of the defects of those early
efforts will give one a better understanding and appreciation of the
modern multiple switchboard, and particularly of the modern multiple
common-battery switchboard, the most highly organized of all the manual
switching systems. Brief reference will, therefore, be made to the
so-called series multiple switchboard, and then to the branch terminal
multiple switchboard, which latter was the highest type of switchboard
development at the time of the advent of common-battery working.

[Illustration: Fig. 337. Series Magneto Multiple Switchboard]

=Series-Multiple Board.= In Fig. 337 are shown the circuits of a series
magneto multiple switchboard as developed by the engineers of the
Western Electric Company during the