A Thousand Kilometres of Voice

A long-distance telephone repeater room in Berlin on a rainy spring afternoon, grey window light and a green-shaded lamp, on a dark wooden base box with brass terminals a clear glass amplifier valve thirty-one centimetres tall upright in a black holder, two joined bulbs, a smaller round bulb below and a larger egg-shaped bulb above with a small glass tip, at the narrow waist a short cylinder of fine wire mesh and behind it a wire spiral on a glass rod, a faint blue-violet glow inside, a metal base with four thick pins, black cloth cables to a candlestick telephone, a hand in a white shirt cuff tightening a terminal.