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Show (IN THESE UNITED STATES Party Line Disappears but Neighbors Still 'Listen In' CHEYENNE WELLS. COLO. Another signpost in rural American living was threatened here when ' the party line gave way to a radio telephone hookup. One consolation, however, is that the time-honored rural practice ot "listening in" will survive the changeover to modern communication communica-tion methods. It Is still possible to pick up the receiver when a neighbor's neigh-bor's ring sounds and "listen in" i on the conversation, a habit which has brought relief from boredom j and monotony to lonely farm wom- ' en for generations. An eight-party circuit, utilizing , both short wave radio - telephone ; and standard wire, was turned over to eight ranchers in the eastern Colorado plains surrounding this lit- I tie town for the first actual opera- ; tion of the new equipment. Officials of Mountain States Telephone Tele-phone and Telegraph company emphasized em-phasized that the service still was experimental although under actual commercial conditions. It was installed in-stalled here because company officials offi-cials decided this is a typical plains community. The new equipment is one of the plans by which the Bell system, with which the local company is affiliated, af-filiated, is seeking to extend service serv-ice to one million more homes within with-in the next few years. The eight ranches using the new equipment vary in distance from 11 to 21 miles from the central office of-fice and are in a region without previous telephone or power lines. Equipment at each ranch includes in-cludes a receiver, 10-watt transmitter, trans-mitter, telephone, two antennae and home power plant. Only the telephone tele-phone is in view. |