Definition of "telephone exchange" []

• A central system of switches and other equipment that establishes connections between individual telephones. Also called switchboard. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In the days before fully automated telephone exchange systems, this meant that Janet had to connect long distance from El Lago to Clear Lake."
• "The Junkers had taken the telephone exchange on the Morskaya and the Bolsheviki had surrounded them."
• "So we will do no more than allude to the failure to blow up the telephone exchange at Rastenburg; the hesitation and scruples of the plotters waiting in the Bendlerstrasse; the failure to shoot Fromm and Renier, and to deploy the "loyal" (i.e., disloyal)"