Yvonne Duncan was born in 1936 and came to Duns in the 1940s. She went to work in the Duns Telephone Exchange at 16 or 17 years old. At this time, to make a telephone call a private caller would lift the telephone handset in their home and a telephonist at the exchange would answer 'number please?'. The telephonist would then connect the call and record, in writing, the two numbers that she had connected and the caller would eventually be billed for the call. In the case of long distance calls the length of time a call lasted would also be recorded by the telephonist. In this piece Yvonne remembers what her job involved.