Switch Panels

a kind of electromechanical circuit switch created by the Bell System for usage in big cities when it was thought the more traditional step-by-step (SxS) wouldn't scale well. The panel switch, the first common control switch, employed a store-and-forward mechanism in which the end user's dialled digits were temporarily kept in a register. After dialling the entire number, the register transferred the dialled numbers to a translator who translated them into routing instructions, or it sent them straight to the sender who delivered the relevant dialled digits via a trunk or to local switching equipment. The reason a panel switch got its name is because a ladder system was used to run the line selection system. A selection was informed