Read Ebook: The Telephone in America: Bell Telephone System by Anonymous

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Ebook has 172 lines and 12185 words, and 4 pages

? Telephone central office forces in 233 cities and towns.

? Telephone equipment and plant, including almost 2,400 buildings, in all but one state.

? About 27,000,000 miles of talking circuits.

When you call across the sea

In that same year, telephone engineers also made history by establishing experimental radio-telephone connections across the Atlantic between Arlington, Va., near Washington. D. C., to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, as well as to the Hawaiian Islands and Panama.

Although World War I delayed the development of overseas service, years of further experimenting and perfecting led, in 1927, to the opening of regular overseas telephone service between the United States and England. Since then service has been extended to more than 100 countries and territories overseas, and it is possible now to reach some 96% of the world's telephones from any telephone in the United States. Today, overseas conversations take place at the rate of over 1,000,000 a year. Overseas centers in New York, Oakland and Miami furnish the overseas radiotelephone service, handling calls in much the same way as other long distance calls.

Now, to handle more calls and for greater dependability in telephoning between this continent and Great Britain, the first transatlantic cable is being built. Another cable is being built to Alaska, which will be able to carry 36 conversations at a time, and will be immune to atmospheric disturbances that sometimes affect radiotelephone circuits. There is also a new method of radio transmission, called "over-the-horizon," soon to be introduced between Florida and Cuba. This will provide needed additional telephone channels and will also open up the possibility of television service over the route.

Radio and television networks

Not everybody realizes that network radio programs go over telephone channels from point of origin to the local radio stations that actually broadcast them. The Bell System's experience in serving radio networks dates from 1923, when network broadcasting began. Today, in order to link the nation's radio stations, Long Lines operates about 200,000 miles of program transmission circuits. And within their own territories, the operating telephone companies, too, furnish some program circuits.

Bell System scientists pioneered also in sending television images from one place to another, by both wire and radio. The years of experience in serving radio networks have been invaluable in solving the problems of TV network transmission. As of July, 1955, the System linked about 365 TV stations in about 240 American cities. To keep pace with the latest developments, the nationwide TV network has been equipped for color programs, which are available to over 230 stations in about 130 cities.

Color and Monochrome Available To Cities On These Routes Routes Equipped For Monochrome Only Planned

Other "Custom-tailored" services

Long Lines and the operating companies also provide extensive private line services--that is, service for customers who have a large enough volume of communications between two or more points to need facilities for their exclusive use, tailored to their individual requirements. The private line services are provided by means of both wire and radio, for a specified period of time and usually on a recurring basis. Many American industries, the press and governmental agencies use these services, which include telephone, teletypewriter, teletypesetter, radio and television network transmission, facsimile and telephotograph.

"General Staff" services benefit all

Serving the local communities in their territories is the responsibility of the operating companies. There are, however, general problems shared by all the companies. In order to handle these problems efficiently and at reasonable cost, the operating companies contract with the AT&T Company for those things that a centralized organization can do better and more economically.

This contractual relationship is an outgrowth of the original licensing arrangement, in which the first telephone companies obtained instruments for the use of their subscribers. It was founded on the necessities of the business. It exists today for the same reason.

To meet this responsibility, AT&T is organized to serve the operating companies in matters of engineering and operation, finance, accounting and law, and to assist them in other ways that may help them in conducting their business.

Through AT&T, patent rights covering the results of Bell System research in communications are made available to the operating companies. It is the System's policy also to make licenses under such patents available to others outside the System on reasonable terms and on a non-exclusive basis.

Among the many AT&T staff services to the telephone companies are those described as "operation and engineering." These include the entire range of construction, operation, maintenance, methods and practices. The AT&T general staff constantly studies new ideas for improved equipment and practices that may originate anywhere in the System. Promising ideas are developed and tested, usually in collaboration with the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Improvements that result are spread over the whole Bell System.

Besides operation and engineering services, other AT&T groups help the telephone companies devise better business and office routines. Still other groups advise the companies on the most efficient methods in accounting, statistical analyses, public relations and advertising activities, and in all the many other phases of the telephone business.

Out of the savings of the many

One of AT&T's most important services to the operating telephone companies is financial assistance. This is especially true in periods of rapid growth, like the present. In these times the telephone companies need vast sums of money for equipment and buildings to expand and strengthen the nation's communications network for defense, and to meet the public demand for telephone service.

The money for improving and expanding telephone service comes from people in all walks of life. It comes from the savings of the many, not the wealth of the few. Most of this money is invested in securities of the AT&T Company, which in turn supplies funds to the operating companies.

Many AT&T share owners are long-time investors. More than a fourth of them have owned their AT&T stock ten years or more. And over 60 per cent of these have increased their investment during those ten years.

About 351,000 of the shareholdings represent two persons--husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers--who have invested savings in their joint names.

Besides the direct owners of AT&T, many other people--such as insurance company policy holders and bank customers--help indirectly to finance the business through the AT&T shares held by organizations and trustees. The largest AT&T shareholder is a nation-wide investment firm that holds stock for thousands of customers. Among other institutional holders are some 2,100 churches, 1,100 hospitals and homes, over 1,000 schools and libraries, over 500 foundations and charities.

More than 200,000 Bell System employees own AT&T stock purchased under payroll sayings plans. Many of these, together with other employees, are now buying shares under the current payroll sayings plan.

Such widespread ownership by investors helps make possible the good telephone service you get today.

Ideals and aims

Management's aim and responsibility is to see that telephone users get the most and best possible service. The cost of service must be as low as may be consistent with good wages and working conditions for employees and with a reasonable return for share owners on their investment in the business.

Research Improves Telephone Service

Telephone research began in 1876 in the Boston attic where Alexander Graham Bell carried on his first successful experiments on the "electric speaking telephone." From Bell's modest beginning has evolved the Bell Telephone Laboratories of today, where over 9,000 scientists, engineers, technicians and auxiliary personnel constantly seek ways to improve telephone service, widen its usefulness, and keep its cost low.

This description is, of course, a highly simplified account of the work of the Laboratories. The broad functions of research and development constantly merge. At all times there must be close co-operation among various groups in the Laboratories, between the Laboratories and the telephone companies, where models are tried out, and between the Laboratories and Western Electric, where products are manufactured.

Here is just one example of the way research and development have extended telephony, improved it, and reduced its cost:

Many years ago, the use of a pair of wires instead of a single, grounded wire greatly improved transmission and made it possible to talk longer distances. This increased the demand for service but also increased the number of wires strung on telephone poles. The large number of wires on towering poles along city streets began to cast shadows of doubt on the prospects for further growth. Compact cables had to be developed and a way found to run them underground. Years of painstaking study and trial accomplished this. Now some exchange cables contain as many as 2,121 pairs of wire.

This cable evolution illustrates the dollar value of telephone research and development. The standard cable of 1888 contained 50 pairs of wires and its installed cost was more than 0 per pair-mile. In 1954, despite rising costs, underground cable cost in the order of per pair-mile in place, and much of it was 2,121-pair.

A few milestones in research

Through the years Bell Laboratories has led progress in communications and electronics. No scientific achievement has had more far-reaching effects on communications than the Laboratories' work in the development of the vacuum tube. Bell scientists were the first to devise a practical amplifier tube which, placed at intervals in long distance lines, restored the energy of weakening voice currents, making it possible to telephone from coast to coast.

The Laboratories was the first to develop automatic equipment that can "remember" telephone numbers and perform other complicated operations in the central office.

The Laboratories pioneered the development of coaxial cable and microwave radio-relay systems. Both can be used to transmit television programs and hundreds of telephone conversations.

Among the many other achievements of the Laboratories have been important contributions to the design of computers--the amazing electronic machines that can work out problems that might otherwise take months or years of work by mathematicians.

Early in 1954, the Laboratories announced a device that realizes one of the ancient dreams of mankind--the Bell Solar Battery, which converts the sun's light directly into useful amounts of electricity. Research that led to the transistor led also to the battery--and to a tiny and durable switch that one day may handle the automatic switching of your telephone calls, and other things not yet imagined.

The Laboratories and national defense

The Laboratories makes its services available to the armed forces for work to which it is uniquely suited. It specializes in military communications and those instruments of war that depend heavily on communications and electronics.

Reliability and trouble-free operation throughout long life are objectives of the Laboratories in designing new equipment and products for the Bell System. The same objectives are also very important in designing military equipment. Because of this similarity in the two fields, scientists and engineers in the Laboratories often divide their working days between Bell System and military problems. Personnel moves frequently between the two fields of endeavor. Thus the Laboratories' long experience in the peacetime science of telephony helps strengthen the nation's defense--and discoveries that grow out of military preparedness help strengthen and improve the nations telephone system.

Service of Manufacture and Supply

The manufacture of reliable, standardized telephone apparatus is a major responsibility of another Bell System unit, the Western Electric Company. It supplies to the operating companies telephone equipment of high quality at reasonable prices.

Western Electric also buys for the operating telephone companies supplies that it does not itself produce. Since large quantities are required, this arrangement results in important economies.

Western Electric speeds delivery to the telephone companies of the right equipment and materials, and the right time, from stocks maintained in distributing houses from coast to coast.

Also, specially trained western Electric forces install for the Bell companies most of the complicated central office equipment required to connect all parts of the telephone system.

Experience has proved the great value of centering these responsibilities in an organization that works as a unit of the System toward the same goals as the telephone companies--a service steadily improving and increasing in value to more and more people.

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