Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
For the first time in the history of communications in this territory, four of the eight inhabited islands of the Hawaiian group were connected today by commercial radio telephone service.
With no more emotion than if they had been handling the usual run of local wire calls, three operators took their places at a switchboard in the Mutual Telephone Co. building at 8 a.m. and started the business of plugging in connections which started a network of voices traveling among Oahu, Maui, Hawaii and Kauai.
Miss Marjorie Choi, Miss Mitsuyo Inaba and Miss Mabel Lee took the first trick at the board. Nearby hovered Mrs. Nellie Miller, chief operator. With earphones on his head, Frank Salsbury, traffic superintendent, checked the ebb and flow of this new phase of the company’s business.
Lights flashed. Calls were coming in from the outside islands. Honolulans were calling up friends scores of miles over the water. Traffic was handled with clocklike precision and smoothness.
Over in Hilo a Japanese mother burst into tears as she heard the voice of her son, calling her from Honolulu.
Mr. Balch looks on
John A. Balch, president of the company, figured he ought to stay in his office downstairs. But curiosity led him upstairs and to the inter-island switchboard, glistening in its newnesss.
Twenty years ago Mr. Balch first got the idea of inter-island communication via radio and the spoken word. Today it was working, sweetly, as operators say, on a commercial basis, ready to make money for the company. Mr. Balch was seeing the realization of a dream of two decades ago.
"Hello, Mr. Jones? Maui calling; just a moment, please. There you are."
"It’s coming in beautifully, beautifully," he murmured to J.M. Peirce, assistant manager, who was responsible for installation of all the lines and switchboards.
