PBX

Last week, I posted Alan Sherman’s song Harvey and Sheila.  In the song, Sherman says that Sheila “runs the PBX, and makes out the checks.”  That got me to wondering just how many people alive today even know what a PBX is.

Also known as a switchboard, a PBX – Private Branch Exchange – is how telephone calls were routed at the time Sherman wrote the song.

In very large companies, multiple operators manned stations like the one above, while in smaller companies, the PBX operator often doubled as the receptionist. In the 1950s, back when Allen Parkway was still known as Buffalo Drive, my mother worked as a switchboard operator/receptionist for Gulf Publishing Company. 

Change was gradual, but at some point in the 80s, digital phones and electronic switching made the old switchboards obsolete, and it was hard to find a PBX anywhere outside of a museum.