Some have speculated that researchers consciously flipped the layout so that dialers would slow down, giving the switchboard time to register the numbers.
Programming was done by plugging hundreds of wires into plugboards, sort of like old school telephone switchboards, in order to set up the computer to perform the right operations.
More modern examples include telephone switchboard operators being replaced with automatic switchboards in 1960, and robotic arms replacing human painters in car factories in the 1980s.
The operator, Tepco, has released a picture of a dead rat near one of the switchboards and suggested that that could have been the cause of the power failure.
Another is Charles E. Scribner, who, by his invention of that intricate device, the multiple switchboard, has converted the telephone exchange into a smoothly working, orderly place.
另一个是查尔斯·E·斯克里布纳 (Charles E. Scribner), 发明了复杂的设备, 多路总,将电话交换变成了一个工作顺畅、井然有序的地方。