The electromechanical steampunk complexity of the Strowger switch is such that it's hard to believe that hundreds of millions of them were made to work together in the Bell System, such a vital catalyst to the rise of American civilization throughout most of the 20th century.
Your phone — the dial phone that sat somewhere in your house, or your parent's house — connected to the phone network by a wire, was matched by a rack bay at the "Central Office" of the phone company. Each and every phone had about ten inches of 19" rack space devoted to it; the rent you paid for the phone also paid for that rack space, and the Strowger switches and other wiring that occupied it, as well as (of course) the power supply necessary to make it run when you picked up the receiver and released the switch hook, connecting the phone to the system.
There are a number of YouTube videos on this — and many related — subjects.
Strowger switch?
Huh, never heard it called that, we called it step-by-step.
Our Post installed one as part of the entire phone system for a Boy Scout camp.