A Klappenschrank was a piece of equipment in the early days of the telephone, that was used to connect two subscribers with each other.

It was operated by a Fräulein vom Amt and was effectively a board made up of holes – one hole per line, covered with a small cap.  The caps would flap to show that someone wanted to make a phone call, and often a light bulb would show that a line was still in use.  Two holes would be connected by a wire to establish the call between the two parties.

They stopped being used on the telephone network in the western German states in 1966, and in the GDR in 1987.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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Tags: Operator, subscriber, telephone

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• Cold calling
• Kurbelinduktor
• Das Fräulein vom Amt

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under German Words Explained, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.