Interview: Megan Hutching - Oral Historian MOTA (Auckland)

Q What’s Your Title (at MOTAT)?
A Oral historian

Q What’s your Degree , training
A I have an MA in History, and have worked as an oral historian for the past 20 years

Q How did you get to work at MOTAT and do you do other things on the days out side the Tues you are there?
A I wanted a job for one day a week after I moved to Auckland from Wellington in 2007, and saw the job at MOTAT for an oral historian. When I’m not at MOTAT, I work as a freelance historian writing books, writing for museum exhibitions, and recording oral history interviews.

Q Have do done many other Oral History projects – highlight in a sentence or two the others, interesting ones obviously
A I’ve done heaps of oral history projects.
I spent seven years interviewing Second World War veterans when I worked in Wellington. I then edited the interviews which were published in a series of books, the first of which was A Unique Sort of Battle: New Zealanders Remember Crete. I have recently completed a project interviewing engineers who worked on the construction of the Auckland harbour bridge in the 1950s, and men who worked on the bridge after it was opened in May 1959.

Q Why are you interested in the Oral history of Telephone operators?
A Two of my sisters and one of my brothers-in-law worked as exchange operators, so I have a slight personal connection.
Exchange operators were essential in maintaining personal and business communication in this country, and yet were seldom seen. The role no longer really exists and I wanted to record their experiences.
I also wanted to record some women’s experiences – because of its focus, MOTAT is quite a blokey place!

Q Tell us about the Project
A Aim of the Project
To record the experiences of telephone exchange operators both in small country manual exchanges, and in larger metropolitan exchanges where local calls were automated but toll calls were still handled by operators.

Q Who thought it up or where the initiative came from
A It was my idea.

Q Is this part of MOTAT’s Conservation of Technology History Mandate/Mission?
A Yes. It will contribute to the exhibitions currently on display in the Telecommunications display at MOTAT, and the interviews will be archived in MOTAT’s Walsh Memorial Library oral history archive.

Q How is it funded (sponsorship?)
A Sponsorship would be great! My job is funded by the Walsh Memorial Library at MOTAT.

Q When we talked you mentioned that MOTAT has a couple of old Exchange switchboards (what brands, era, how many lines in and out) and d you know where they were used?
The manual switchboard at MOTAT is from Tuakau, where it was used between 1914-76. It’s an Ericsson drop shutter board and had 100 lines.

Q Have you met anyone who actually may have used these?
A Not this particular switchboard, but a switchboard just like it.

Q You’ve been collecting interviews – what will you do with them?
A They will be archived in MOTAT’s Walsh Memorial Library, and a copy will be sent to the Alexander Turnbull Library’s Oral History Centre in Wellington. Excerpts from the interviews may be used in the Telecommunications display at MOTAT.

Q Who have you interviewed
A So far, three operators. One worked in the country in two small telephone exchanges in the early 1950s; one worked as a toll operator in Christchurch and Auckland, and one had a range of experience in small and large manual exchanges.

Q Can you highlight a few interesting stories you’ve learnt so far?
A In Matakana (a very small rural exchange) in the 1950s the exchange closed at 12 midnight and a line was switched through to the postmaster’s house. If you wanted to ring someone after midnight and before 6 a.m., you couldn’t! If it was a real emergency, you would have to go and wake the postmaster up and ask to use his phone to ring through to Warkworth which had a 24-hour service.

A It could sometimes take days to make a person-to-person toll call, because if the person you wanted was not available when the operator first rang, they would keep trying until the person could take the call. Person-to-person calls were more expensive than ordinary toll calls – this was one of the reasons.

Some Facts
Q When was the first manual switchboard introduced to New Zealand’s PSTN (Public Service Telephone Network)?
A In Christchurch in 1881. There were 30 subscribers. Auckland followed 10 days later – there were 26 subscribers.
Q Does anybody know the maximum number of Operator Switchboards operating just before the Automatic Switches started to be introduced
A No
Q Also when the Automatic switches were introduced what was the number of Subscribers ?
A The Telecommunications people here make the point that the introduction of automatic exchanges did not happen all at once. Main centres would have automatic exchanges for their local calls, but suburbs and surrounding towns might not be automated until much later. The switchboard that we have from Tuakau underlines that point. Auckland had its first automatic exchange in 1912, but Tuakau (which is about 60 km away by road) wasn’t automated until 1976 – 64 years later.