Reality: A picture of the Swedish telephone exchange, with some 5,500 incoming lines.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-stockholm-telephone-tower-1890/
Even if there was primitive multiplexing on those cables, I am fairly sure a 100 Mbps link could handle all of them these days with bandwidth to spare.
Edit: Telephony multiplexing didn’t show up till 1910 but telegraphy multiplexing was around since the 1870s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexing
Yeah but you wouldn’t get that sweet analogue tone.
C’mon bro, just one more phone line. Just one more and it’ll be enough. Come on just one more line.
Can’t imagine the weight of all those, never mind trying to find a particular one that was flaking out because some animal chewed through it or something.
He’s a menace, I tell ya!
Respect the hyphen!
