Pentaconta

The Pentaconta is a crossbar automatic telephone exchange, made at Electromagnetica under a licence bought in 1968; one unit could reach 100,000 subscribers and interconnect with other switching systems to international standards [1]. For ten years the works had Belgian technical assistance, and the exchanges were exported under the licensor’s name [1]. According to the book’s section on the ICPTTc institute, a Pentaconta crossbar exchange was already installed in 1966 at the Victoria exchange in Bucharest, when the city moved from five- to six-digit numbers; at first it connected 12 exchanges in the country, the first being Brașov, Constanța, Eforie, Mangalia and Mamaia [1].