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
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
When was the last time you actually went to a telephone office to set up service? Nowadays people just call. Of course I could see how that would be difficult if you didn’t have a phone. Also, when was the last time you went into a service office and someone actually had a desk you could sit at? Now it would probably be a person behind a lexan shielded counter.
Good Neighbors
The Bell System serves the whole country, yet it remains close to the people. The people use it. Their savings built it. “It belongs to Main Street.”
The 270,000 employees of the Bell System live and work in your neighborhood and in similar neighborhoods in every section of the country. They are good neighbors. Thousands of times each day and night their activities bring friendly aid to those in need.
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There is no standing still . . .
An Advertisement of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company
During the past two years 6000 switchboards have been reconstructed in the larger cities served by the Bell System to enable the operators to give a more direct and faster service. Previously in towns where there were more than one central office, your operator would hold you on the line while she got the operator at the other central office on an auxiliary pair of wires. Now she connects directly with the other central office and repeats the number you want to the other operator. You hear her do this so that you can correct her if there is any mistake.
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This certainly seems like a pain in the ass way to make a transistor.
The machine we call “Mr. Meticulous”
Bell Laboratories scientists, who invented the junction transistor, have now created an automatic device which performs the intricate operations required for the laboratory production of experimental model transistors.
It takes a bar of germanium little thicker than a hair and tests its electrical characteristics. Then, in steps of 1/20,000 of an inch, it automatically moves a fine wire along the bar in search of an invisible layer of positive germanium to which the wire must be connected. This layer may be as thin as 1/10,000 of an inch!
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Highways of Speech
Necessity made the United States a nation of pioneers. Development came to us only by conquering the wilderness. For a hundred and fifty years we have been clearing farms and rearing communities where desolation was—bridging rivers and making roads—reaching out, step by step, to civilize three million square miles of country. One of the results has been the scattering of families in many places—the separation of parents and children, of brother and brother, by great distances.
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