How your telephone call asks directions… and gets quick answers

When the Bell System’s latest dial equipment receives orders to connect your telephone with another in a distant city, it must find-quickly and automatically—the best route.

Route information is supplied in code—as holes punched on steel cards. When a call comes in, the dial system selects the appropriate card, then reads it by means of light beams and photo-transistors. Should the preferred route be in use the system looks up an alternate route.

Same wires – many more voices
Connecting new multi-voice system to open-wire lines, near Albany, Georgia. With new system, 150,000 miles of short open-wire telephone lines can be made to carry up to 16 simultaneous messages economically.

Much of your Long Distance telephone system works through cable but open-wire lines are still the most economical in many places. Thousands of these circuits are so short that little would be saved by using elaborate carrier telephone systems which are better suited for long-haul routes. But a new carrier system . . . the Type O designed especially for short hauls … is changing the picture. It is economical on lines as short as 15 miles. With Type O thousands of lines will carry as many as 16 conversations apiece.

Type O is a happy combination of many elements, some new, some used in new ways. As a result, terminal equipment takes up one-eighth as much space as before. Little service work is required on location; entire apparatus units can be removed and replaced as easily as vacuum tubes.

Moreover, the new carrier system saves copper by multiplying the usefulness of existing lines. For telephone users it means more service . . . while the cost stays low.
BELL TELEPHONE LABORATORIES

Improving telephone service for America provides careers for creative men in scientific and technical fields

IF THE TELEPHONE WERE NOT THERE!
Many times each day you reach for the telephone on your desk at the office or in its familiar spot at home. It is an old and trusted friend. You scarcely give a thought to what it means to a busy day. Yet suppose the telephone were not there! Suppose—for a week—or a month —you could not call anybody by telephone and nobody could call you! The whole machinery of business and the home would be thrown out of gear.

Orders would be lost—efficiency and profits reduced. You would be out of touch with the world about you.

America needs quick, reliable, efficient telephone service to get things done in the brisk, up-to-the-minute American manner. And it enjoys the best service in the world.

Greater progress has been made in this country because of the Bell System’s one policy, one system and universal service.

America leads in telephone service. In relation to population, there are six times as many telephones in this country as in Europe and the telephone is used nine times as much.
BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM