Bell System

“ It is no longer protected by any patent monopoly. Whoever is rich enough and rash enough may enter the field. But it has all the immeasurable advantages that come from long experience, immense bulk, the most highly skilled specialists, and an abundance of capital. "The Bell System is strong," says Vail, "because we are all tied up together; and the success of one is therefore the concern of all."
The Bell System! Here we have the motif of American telephone development. Here is the most comprehensive idea that has entered any telephone engineer's brain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While all the facilities of the Bell System were available, only about 53,000 miles of wire were necessary to connect all the navy yards and stations for telephonic and telegraphic communication.
The successful demonstration showed that in case of any trouble requiring any such service, because of the central control of the Bell System, the government could have ready-made at its immediate disposal a plant, equipment and operating staff which, for completeness and efficiency, would not be possible in any other way.
Why do They Call Them “Fiddler-Crabs”? ”

“ The Bell System alone employs about 700,000 men and women, who are busy planning, designing, manufacturing, improving, building, operating—all working to fulfill the traditional telephone policy of providing the best possible service at the lowest possible cost. ”

“ A large proportion of the people in the Bell System make a career of telephone work. More than 245,000 of them have been in the business over ten years. Wages are good, employment steady, and working conditions are pleasant. The Bell companies’ Benefit and Pension Plans, among the oldest and best in industry, assist employees and their families in meeting the problems that arise from sickness, accident, old age and death. Opportunity to advance in the organization is open to all on the basis of individual ability. ”

“ Much of this research and planning work has been done for the Bell System companies by a central organization of a few carefully selected engineers and accountants, and in this way it has been done better and more economically than if each of the numerous operating companies had been left to its own initiative. The independent telephone companies have also profited from this work.' Telephone and Railroad Depreciation Charges, Proposed Report of August 15, 1929. ”

“ The telephone was born in America and has reached its highest development in this country. Since 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell first talked successfully over his primitive telephone, a network of voice highways has grown up throughout the nation, linking more than fifty-four million telephones. About four-fifths of these are owned by the Bell System, which is a group of closely associated telephone companies, a research and development organization and a manufacturing and supply company, all headed by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. ”

“ A complex manufacturing job
As manufacturing unit of the Bell System, Western Electric must be ready at all times to produce over 200,000 different kinds of apparatus and component parts for telephone equipment. Each year, about 70,000 of these are required and manufactured. The quantity of each item produced varies from one to many millions. Mass production methods are used wherever possible, but the items required in large quantities are very much in the minority. ”

“ With the steady pressure of world tensions, the Bell System has taken many steps to make sure that America’s defense needs will be met. The telephone companies have a good foundation to build on. Telephone buildings are of unusually strong construction. The entire United States is blanketed by a network of telephone circuits. ”

“ The other telephones are owned and operated by some 5,000 independent telephone companies and about 20,000 rural or farmer lines outside the Bell System but connecting with it.
Bell telephone service is home town service. Linked with thousands of other home town services, it makes a neighborhood of the nation. The company that furnishes your service is part of your community. ”

“ Because telephone equipment must be tailor-made—much of it in small quantities—it is necessary for the manufacturing and supply unit to have intimate knowledge of Bell System plant everywhere. And since telephone plant must give trouble-free service 24 hours a day, telephone equipment must be of the highest quality and built to exact, uniform standards. Experience has proved that the design, manufacture and operation of standard telephone equipment can be accomplished best when the designers, the makers, and the operating people work closely together on the same team. ”

“ Two forces, American science and American business capacity, have accomplished this result. As a mechanism, this American telephone system is the product not of one but of many minds. What most strikes the imagination is the story of Alexander Graham Bell, yet other names—Carty, Scribner, Pupin—play a large part in the story. ”

“ 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.
Some members of the Laboratories are engaged in basic research. They explore the physical sciences—physics, mathematics, chemistry—seeking basic knowledge that may contribute to better communications. Fundamental development is the second step in the chain leading toward manufacture and use. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
The Bell System believes that the most and best possible service means telephone service for the nation that, so far as possible, is free from imperfections, errors or delays—service that enables anyone, anywhere, to pick up a telephone and talk to anyone else, clearly, quickly, at reasonable cost. ”

“ Bell System mobile telephone service is now a reality in most major cities and on many highways. “Traveling telephones” are numerous on ships that ply coastal and inland waterways, and a growing number of passenger trains now offer regular telephone service. In addition, private line mobile telephone systems, leased and serviced by the various Bell telephone companies, are being used increasingly by police departments, utilities and industrial concerns. ”

“ As a telephone user, you want to be able to count on your telephone, to be able to call other telephone users any time, anywhere. You expect reliable service at low cost. The kind of service you expect depends on teamwork—among telephone people in your local company, and among the separate companies that make up the Bell System. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Teletypewriter service transmits typewritten messages from one point to another, whether the sending and receiving machines are in the same building or across the continent. Teletypesetter service, by means of electrical impulses sent over Bell System circuits, makes it possible to set type for newspaper or other publication use speedily and from a distance. ”

“ Through times of boom and depression, during all-out war and postwar readjustment, and now in a period of defense preparation, the Bell companies have improved and strengthened the communications network in order to do the best possible job for the nation. ”

“ Bell, which are so highly estimated in Great Britain, are also strongly recommended by professional gentlemen throughout the Union. They form a system of Anatomy, in themselves, and must be considered as a very important addition to every Medical Library. ”

“ However good may be the bells, indicators, batteries, etc., used in an electric bell installation, if the wiring be in any wise faulty, the system will surely be continually breaking down, and giving rise to dissatisfaction. It is therefore of the highest importance that the workman, if he value his good name, should pay the greatest attention to ensure that this part of his work be well and thoroughly done. ”

“ Ownership of the operating companies by the headquarters organization came about because of their need to finance expanding service, and as a means of providing the best service at lowest cost. AT&T bought Western Electric in 1882 because it was the best manufacturer of telephone apparatus and because a dependable source of supplies was essential. The Bell Laboratories stemmed from the shop where Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone. The work of the Laboratories is a continuation, on a much larger scale, of early efforts to discover improvements in the art of telephony. ”

“ With the help of fast, economical construction methods and new transmission techniques, the Bell companies are improving and extending telephone service in rural areas. Power-driven augers quickly drill pole holes. Special plows place wire underground and cover it, in one operation. By means of special equipment, both electric power and telephone conversations can travel to farms over the same wires. ”

“ That an electro-magnet could vibrate a tuning-fork and so produce sound was an entirely new and fascinating idea to the youth. It appealed to his imagination, quickened by his knowledge of speech. "Why not an electrical telegraph?" he asked himself. His idea seems to have been that the electric current could carry different notes over the wire and reproduce them by means of the electro-magnet. Although Bell did not know it, many others were struggling with the same problem, the answer to which proved most elusive. It gave Bell a starting-point, and the search for the telephone began. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Highly trained Western Electric men install central office equipment for the Bell telephone companies. Altogether, Western Electric is able to supervise all steps in making the equipment ready for use, from purchase of raw materials to finished installation. This assures the telephone companies that new apparatus will give the best possible service. ”

“ The simple tests on star discs in and out of focus here described are ample for all ordinary purposes, and a glass which passes them well is beyond question an admirably figured one. The tests are not however quantitative, and it takes an experienced eye to pick out quickly minor errors, which are somewhat irregular. One sometimes finds the ring system excellent but a sort of haze in the field, making the contrasts poor—bad polish or dirt, but figure good. ”

“ The courteous, helpful service rendered by telephone operators has become a traditional part of American life. Even in communities that have dial service, “the voice with a smile” is on the job to handle long distance calls, to provide telephone numbers not included in the directory, and to give any other help that customers may desire.
Ever since World War II, the Bell companies have kept on installing new equipment in great quantities to meet the largest demand ever experienced for new telephone service. ”

“ Ringing machines generate alternating current to operate your telephone bell and provide the various signals you hear in your telephone receiver. These machines are installed in pairs so that there will be no interruption of telephone service should one machine fail to operate properly. ”

“ Western Electric operates 29 distributing houses through which materials flow to the Bell companies. Each house is set up to meet the supplies requirements of the telephone company it serves. It works closely with the telephone organization to deliver the goods promptly and efficiently. Each 28 distributing house maintains a repair shop to recondition service-worn telephone apparatus so that it will give good service again, or, if not economical to repair, to dismantle it for salvage. ”

“ Bell knew the field of his work in a general way, but he had not yet decided which path to choose of several that looked as if they might lead across it. His far-distant goal was to construct a machine that would carry, not the dots and dashes of the telegraph, but the complex vibrations of the human voice. ”