We dug and refilled a 4000-mile trench to protect 9300 communications circuits against disaster

We split the continent with a trench four feet deep to give the United States its first blast-resistant coast-to-coast underground communications cable system.

More than four years ago when the first of 2500 giant reels of coaxial cable, started unrolling in New York State, we began an important project that will give added protection to the nation’s vital communications.
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New Bell Solar Battery Converts Sun’s Rays Into Electricity

Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrate new device for using power from the sun.

Great and kindly is the sun. Each day it bathes the earth in light, bringing life to everything on earth.

Scientists have long reached for the secret of the sun. For they have known that it sends us nearly as much energy daily as is contained in all known reserves of coal, oil and uranium. Read the rest of this entry »

One finger works all this

TWIRL your Bell telephone dial and a maze of apparatus like this goes into action in the central office—puts your call through quickly, surely.

Making and installing such complex apparatus— as well as producing telephones, cables and thousands of other kinds of equipment used in your service—is Western Electric’s job as manufacturing unit of the Bell System. Read the rest of this entry »

What the Telephone Map Shows

EVERY dot on the map marks a town where there is a telephone exchange, the same sized dot being used for a large city as for a small village. Some of these exchanges are owned by the Associated Bell companies and some by independent companies. Where joined together in one system they meet the needs of each community and, with their suburban lines, reach 70,000 places and over 8,000,000 subscribers.

The pyramids show that only a minority of the exchanges are Bell-owned, and that the greater majority of the exchanges are owned by independent companies and connected with the Bell System.

At comparatively few points are there two telephone companies, and there are comparatively few exchanges, chiefly rural, which do not have outside connections.

The recent agreement between the Attorney General of the United States and the Bell System will facilitate connections between all telephone subscribers regardless of who owns the exchanges.

Over 8,000 different telephone companies have already connected their exchanges to provide universal service for the whole country.

American Telephone and Telegraph Company And Associated Companies
One Policy One System Universal Service

Few things are as useless to a businessman as information that reaches him too late

When vital business information is tardy, something or someone usually suffers. Production is slowed up. A customer has to wait. A decision is delayed.

Remedy: Bell System Data-Phone* service. Connected with the business machine-virtually any type —it converts data (from punched cards or tapes) into a special “tone” language and transmits it over the same nationwide telephone network you use for voice communications.
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TRANSISTORS-first family of electronics

In 1948 Bell scientists announced their invention of the transistor—a tiny device able to amplify signals a hundred thousand times using a small fraction of the power of an electron tube.

From this original “point contact” transistor has grown a distinguished family of immense usefulness to electronics. Some of its leading members are shown here, in approximate actual size, with their scientific type names.
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This is pretty damn cool. I would have loved to take a tour of my local switchboard.

“Ever Seen Your Telephone Switchboard?”

It’s a fascinating sight — the inside of a telephone central office where your telephone may be connected with the whole Bell System.

Would you like to know more about the telephone and what happens when you make a call?

Your Bell Telephone Company will be glad to show you. Visitors are welcome and we believe you will have a most interesting time. Why not call the Business Office and arrange a visit?

BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM
You are cordially invited to visit the Bell System exhibit at Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco

Pennies For Wings

The voice of a friend. Reassuring words from father, mother, son or daughter. A hurried call for aid in the night. You cannot set a price on
such things as these.

Yet this is true — telephone service is cheap in this country. No other people get so much service, and such good and courteous service, at such low cost.

BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM

WEAVING THE WORLD OF SPEECH

Daily, as upon a magic loom, the world is bound together by telephone. There, in a tapestry of words, is woven the story of many lives and the pattern of countless activities.

In and out of the switchboard move the cords that intertwine the voices of communities and continents. Swiftly, skilfully, the operator picks up the thread of speech and guides it across the miles. Constantly at her finger-tips are your contacts with people near and far.
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Planning high-speed business

An Advertisement of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company

More than 95% of the telephone calls from one town to another in the Bell System are now on a high-speed basis. This holds whether the call is from New Orleans to Boston or from New York to Oyster Bay.

Even if it is a long call, the operator in many cases now asks you to hold the telephone while the call is put through.
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This is back when Ma Bell was a proud monopoly. “One Policy, One System, Universal Service”. I’m starting to think that Tolkien lifted his whole “one ring” idea from AT&T.

The Road to Home

Though written faithfully, his letters from home seemed to have had a way of arriving at his hotel in one city just after he had left for the next —and of never catching up.

Three weeks passed—business conferences, long night journeyings on sleepers, more conferences—with all too little news from home.

Then he turned eastward. In his hotel room in Chicago he still seemed a long way from that fireside in a New York suburb. He reached for the telephone—asked for his home number.
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So Americans have the thriftiest telephone service in the world and the best way to illustrate that is with a Scottish telephone-man hybrid? What about Scotland? Is their telephone service thrifty too?

It’s a Thrifty Thing… the Telephone

Americans have the world’s best bargain in telephone service. It’s good and it’s cheap. Nowhere else do people get so much service and such good and courteous service at such low cost.

THRIFTY: According to Webster, thrifty means “…Evincing thrift… Characterized by economy and good management . . . Serviceable; useful …”
BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM