SWITCHBOARD • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Switchboard

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noun

switchboard n.

An elctrical apparatus consisting predominantly of a panel on which are switches or other means of completing electrical circuits; used especially for the devices used in telephone exchanges. See sense 2.

(Telephone) An apparatus containing switches by means of which a connection may be made from an incoming telephone line to any one of numerous outgoing lines. The switches may be either mechanical or electronic, and the switching action may be automatic, controlled by signals in the incoming call, or manual, controlled by a switchboard operator. In older style manual switchboards, the circuits were connected by the use of patchcords, inserted into plugs.

Synonyms: patchboard, plugboard, telephone exchange.

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Etymology of 'Switchboard'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Switchboard" Quotes from Famous Books

... Islands. A board table, long enough for three chairs at each side besides the presidential chair at the head and an ordinary chair at the foot, occupies the breadth of the room. On the table, opposite every chair, a small switchboard with a dial. There is no fireplace. The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair of folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and there is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, ...

— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... nervous system consists merely of a mechanism for the reception and transmission of incoming messages and their transformation into outgoing messages which produce movement. The brain is the center where such transformations are made, being a sort of central switchboard which permits the sense-organs to come into communication with muscles. It is also the instrument by means of which the impressions from the various senses can be united and experience can be unified. The brain serves further as the medium whereby impressions ...

— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... sudden need of occasional visitors. On the walls hung framed enlarged photographs of machinery, and factories, and scaffoldings, and the like. There was one of laborers and bosses grouped about great generators and water-wheels in transit, and another of a monster switchboard, with a smiling young operator, in his apron and overalls, standing ...

— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... radiologists and surgeons were working around Lee. Some were attaching electrodes to parts of Lee's body to maintain the electrical impulses necessary to keep his vital processes in motion while the main switchboard was out of commission. Others were sensitizing the exposed brain, from which the skull had already been removed, to guide the delicate fingers of the huge automatic Operating, Recording and Calculating Complex through ...

— Am I Still There? • James R. Hall

... B. Atwood of the First Platoon was seated in the cellar near the switchboard; Private Edgar White was operating the switchboard, and Private Clark the buzzerphone. Several officers and men were standing in the "dugout" cellar. Suddenly a shell struck the top, passed through the ceiling and wall and exploded, making havoc of ...

— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

Words linked to "Switchboard" : exchange, plugboard, patchboard, switchboard operator, telephone exchange, central