telephone history series - telephone tribute home page

privateline.com's

Telephone History Series

by Tom Farley

215 19th StreetWest Sacramento, California 95691

USA

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[email protected]@privateline.tv

Compilation and .pdf formattingby

Dave Mockhttp://www.geocities.com/dmock_1/

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Privateline.com's Telephone History Series by Tom Farley http://www.privateline.com

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Private Line's Telephone HistoryPart 1 -- to 1830

"We picture inventors as heroes with thegenius to recognize and solve a society'sproblems. In reality, the greatest inventors

have been tinkerers who loved tinkering for itsown sake and who then had to figure out what,

if anything, their devices might be good for."Jared Diamond

I. IntroductionII. Early Telephone Development III. The

Inventors: Gray and Bell

I. Introduction

" . . . an inspired black-haired Scotsman oftwenty eight, on theeve of marriage,vibrant and alive tonew ideas." AlexanderGraham Bell : The Lifeand Times of the ManWho Invented theTelephone

On March 10, 1876, in Boston,Massachusetts, Alexander Graham Bellinvented the telephone. Thomas Watsonfashioned the device itself; a crude thingmade of a wooden stand, a funnel, a cup ofacid, and some copper wire. But thesesimple parts and the equally simple firsttelephone call -- "Mr. Watson, come here,I want you!" -- belie a complicated past.Bell filed his application just hours beforehis competitor, Elisha Gray, filed notice tosoon patent a telephone himself. What'smore, though neither man had actuallybuilt a working telephone, Bell made histelephone operate three weeks later usingideas outlined in Gray's Notice ofInvention, methods Bell did not propose inhis own patent.

Intrigue aside for now, the story of thetelephone is the story of invention itself.Bell developed new and original ideas butdid so by building on older ideas anddevelopments. Bell succeeded specificallybecause he understood acoustics, the studyof sound, and something about electricity.Other inventors knew electricity well butlittle of acoustics. The telephone is ashared accomplishment among manypioneers, therefore, although the credit andrewards were not shared equally. That,too, is often the story of invention.

Telephone comes from the Greek wordtele, meaning from afar, and phone,meaning voice or voiced sound. Generally,a telephone is any device which conveyssound over a distance. A string telephone,a megaphone, or a speaking tube might beconsidered telephonic instruments but forour purposes they are not telephones.These transmit sound mechanically andnot electrically. How's that?

Speech is sound in motion. Talkingproduces acoustic pressure. Speaking intothe can of a string telephone, for example,makes the line vibrate, causing soundwaves to travel from one end of thestretched line to the other. A telephone bycomparison, reproduces sound byelectrical means. What the Victorianscalled "talking by lightning."

A standard dictionary defines thetelephone as "an apparatus for reproducingsound, especially that of the voice, at agreat distance, by means of electricity;consisting of transmitting and receivinginstruments connected by a line or wirewhich conveys the electric current."Electricity operates the telephone and it


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carries your voice. With that importantpoint established, let's look at telephonehistory.

Click here for a very large imagedemonstrating how a telephone works

Modern telephones use electretmicrophones for transmitters andpiezoelectric transducers for receivers butthe principle described is the same. Soundwaves picked up by an electretmicrophone causes "a thin, metal-coatedplastic diaphragm to vibrate, producingvariations in an electric field across a tinyair gap between the diaphragm and anelectrode."[B] A piezoelectric transduceruses material which converts themechanical stress of a sound wave upon itinto a varying electrical signal.

Telephone history begins, perhaps, at thestart of human history. Man has alwayswanted to communicate from afar. Peoplehave used smoke signals, mirrors, jungledrums, carrier pigeons and semaphores toget a message from one point to another.But a phone was something new. Somesay Francis Bacon predicted the telephonein 1627, however, his book New Utopiaonly described a long speaking tube. Areal telephone could not be invented untilthe electrical age began. And even then itdidn't seem desirable. The electricalprinciples needed to build a telephonewere known in 1831 but it wasn't until1854 that Bourseul suggested transmitting

speech electrically. And it wasn't until 22years later in 1876 that the idea became areality. But before then, a telephone mighthave been impossible to form in one'sconsciousness.

While Da Vinci predicted flight and JulesVerne envisioned space travel, people didnot lie awake through the centuriesdreaming of making a call. How couldthey? With little knowledge of electricity,let alone the idea that it could carry aconversation, how could people dream of atelephonic future? Who in the fifteenthcentury might have imagined a pay phoneon the street corner or a fax machine ontheir desk? You didn't have then, an easilyvisualized goal among people likepowered flight, resulting in one inventorafter another working through the years torealize a common goal. Telephonedevelopment instead was a series of often-disconnected events, mostly electrical,some accidental, that made the telephonepossible. I'll cover just a few.

There are many ways to communicateover long distances. I have reproduced anice color diagram which shows theRoman alphabet, the international flagcode, Morse Code, and semaphoresignaling. Click here to view

II. Early TelephoneDevelopment

For moreinformation onLeyden jars,includingphotographsandinstructions onhow to buildthem, go thispage at theStaticGenerator site:

http://www.alaska.net/~natnkell/leyden.htm


http://www.privateline.com/archive/howteleworks.gif

http://www.media.mit.edu/people/wiz/transducers.html

http://www.mpage.demon.co.uk/electret.htm

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In 1729 English chemist Stephen Graytransmitted electricity over a wire. He sentcharges nearly 300 feet over brass wireand moistened thread. An electrostaticgenerator powered his experiments, onecharge at a time. A few years later,Dutchman Pieter van Musschenbroek andGerman Ewald Georg von Kleist in 1746independently developed the Leyden jar, asort of battery or condenser for storingstatic electricity. Named for its Hollandcity of invention, the jar was a glass bottlelined inside and out with tin or lead. Theglass sandwiched between the metal sheetsstored electricity; a strong charge could bekept for a few days and transported. Overthe years these jars were used in countlessexperiments, lectures, and demonstrations.

In 1753 an anonymous writer, possiblyphysician Charles Morrison, suggested inThe Scot's Magazine that electricity mighttransmit messages. He thought up ascheme using separate wires to representeach letter. An electrostatic generator, heposited, could electrify each line in turn,attracting a bit of paper by static charge onthe other end. By noting which paperletters were attracted one might spell out amessage. Needing wires by the dozen,signals got transmitted a mile or two.People labored with telegraphs like this formany decades. Experiments continuedslowly until 1800. Many inventors workedalone, misunderstood earlier discoveries,or spent time producing results alreadyachieved. Poor equipment didn't helpeither. Balky electrostatic generatorsproduced static electricity by friction,often by spinning leather against glass.And while static electricity could makehair stand on end or throw sparks, itcouldn't provide the energy to do trulyuseful things. Inventors and industryneeded a reliable and continuous current.In 1800 Alessandro Volta produced thefirst battery. A major development, Volta'sbattery provided sustained low poweredelectric current at high cost. Chemically

based, as all batteries are, the batteryimproved quickly and became theelectrical source for further experimenting.But while batteries got more reliable, theystill couldn't produce the power needed towork machinery, light cities, or provideheat. And although batteries would worktelegraph and telephone systems, and stilldo, transmitting speech requiredunderstanding two related elements,namely, electricity and magnetism.

For an easy to read introduction and a link to acomprehensive article on Volta, visit RjC's site:

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/8835/index.htm

In 1820 Danish physicist Christian Oersteddemonstrated electromagnetism, thecritical idea needed to develop electricalpower and to communicate. In a famousexperiment at his University ofCopenhagen classroom, Oersted pushed acompass under a live electric wire. Thiscaused its needle to turn from pointingnorth, as if acted on by a larger magnet.Oersted discovered that an electric currentcreates a magnetic field. But could amagnetic field create electricity? If so, anew source of power beckoned. And theprinciple of electromagnetism, if fullyunderstood and applied, promised a newera of communication

For an excellent summary of ChristianOersted's life, visit:

http://www.mac-med.com/M%26C%20FILES/04maccs.html

In 1821 Michael Faradayreversed Oersted's experiment. Hegot a weak current to flow in a wirerevolving around a permanentmagnet. In other words, a magneticfield caused or induced an electriccurrent to flow in a nearby wire. Inso doing, Faraday had built theworld's first electric generator.Mechanical energy could now be


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converted to electrical energy. Is thatclear? This is a very important point.

The simple act of moving ones' handcaused current to move. Mechanicalenergy into electrical energy. Althoughmany years away, a dynamo poweredturbine would let the power of flowingwater or burning coal produce electricity.Got a river or a dam? The water spins theturbines which turns the generators whichproduce electricity. The more water youhave the more generators you can add andthe more electricity you can produce.Mechanical energy into electrical energy.

(By comparison, a motor turns electricalenergy into mechanical energy. Thanks to

A. Almoian for pointing out this keydifference.)

Faraday worked through differentelectrical problems in the next ten years,eventually publishing his results oninduction in 1831. By that year manypeople were producing electrical dynamos.But electromagnetism still neededunderstanding. Someone had to show howto use it for communicating.

For more information on Michael Faraday,visit the Institution of Electrical Engineers

at:

http://www.iee.org.uk/publish/faraday/faraday1.html

Resources

[B]"Telecommunications Systems:Telephone: THE TELEPHONEINSTRUMENT" Britannica Online. "Inmodern electret transmitters, developed inthe 1970s, the carbon layer is replaced bya thin plastic sheet that has been given aconductive metallic coating on one side.The plastic separates that coating fromanother metal electrode and maintains anelectric field between them. Vibrationscaused by speech produce fluctuations inthe electric field, which in turn produce

small variations in voltage. The voltagesare amplified for transmission over thetelephone line."

<http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5006/18/5.html>[Accessed 11 February 1999] 9(back to text)


http://www.iee.org.uk/publish/faraday/faraday1.html


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Private Line's Telephone HistoryPart 2 - 1830 to 1870

In 1830 the great American scientistProfessor Joseph Henry transmitted thefirst practical electrical signal. A shorttime before Henry had invented the firstefficient electromagnet. He also concludedsimilar thoughts about induction beforeFaraday but he didn't publish them first.Henry's place in electrical historyhowever, has always been secure, inparticular for showing thatelectromagnetism could do more thancreate current or pick up heavy weights --it could communicate.

In a stunning demonstration inhis Albany Academyclassroom, Henry created theforerunner of the telegraph. Inthe demonstration, Henry firstbuilt an electromagnet bywinding an iron bar withseveral feet of wire. A pivotmounted steel bar sat next to the magnet.A bell, in turn, stood next to the bar. Fromthe electromagnet Henry strung a mile ofwire around the inside of the classroom.He completed the circuit by connecting theends of the wires at a battery. Guess whathappened? The steel bar swung toward themagnet, of course, striking the bell at thesame time. Breaking the connectionreleased the bar and it was free to strikeagain. And while Henry did not pursueelectrical signaling, he did help someonewho did. And that man was Samuel FinleyBreese Morse.

For more information on Joseph Henry, visitthe Joseph Henry Papers Project at:

http://www.si.edu/organiza/offices/archive/ihd/jhp/index.htm

From the December, 1963 American Heritagemagazine, "a sketch of Henry's primitivetelegraph, a dozen years before Morse,reveals the essential components: anelectromagnet activated by a distant battery,and a pivoted iron bar that moves to ring abell."

In 1837 Samuel Morse inventedthe first workable telegraph,applied for its patent in 1838,and was finally granted it in1848. Joseph Henry helpedMorse build a telegraph relay orrep eater that allowed longdistance operation. Thetelegraph later helped unite thecountry and eventually the world. Not aprofessional inventor, Morse wasnevertheless captivated by electricalexperiments. In 1832 he heard ofFaraday's recently published work oninductance, and was given anelectromagnet at the same time to ponderover. An idea came to him and Morsequickly worked out details for histelegraph.

As depicted below, his system used a key(a switch) to make or break the electricalcircuit, a battery to produce power, asingle line joining one telegraph station toanother and an electromagnetic receiver orsounder that upon being turned on and off,produced a clicking noise. He completedthe package by devising the Morse codesystem of dots and dashes. A quick key tapbroke the circuit momentarily, transmittinga short pulse to a distant sounder,


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interpreted by an operator as a dot. A morelengthy break produced a dash.

Telegraphy became big business as itreplaced messengers, the Pony Express,clipper ships and every other slow pacedmeans of communicating. The fact thatservice was limited to Western Unionoffices or large firms seemed hardly a

problem. After all, communicating overlong distances instantly was otherwiseimpossible. Yet as the telegraph wasperfected, man's thoughts turned to speechover a wire.

This site has a small page on Samuel Morse:

http://web.mit.edu/invent/www/inventorsI-Q/morse.html

In 1854 Charles Bourseul wrote abouttransmitting speech electrically in a well-circulated article. In that important paper,the Belgian-born French inventor andengineer described a flexible disk thatwould make and break an electricalconnection to reproduce sound. Bourseulnever built an instrument or pursued hisideas further.

For more information on Bourseul and earlycommunications in general, visit this German

site:

http://www.fht-esslingen.de/telehistory/1870-.html

In 1861 Johann Phillip Reis completed thefirst non-working telephone. Tantalizinglyclose to reproducing speech, Reis'sinstrument conveyed certain sounds,poorly, but no more than that. A Germanphysicist and schoolteacher, Reis'singenuity was unquestioned. Histransmitter and receiver used a cork, aknitting needle, a sausage skin, and a pieceof platinum to transmit bits of music andcertain other sounds. But intelligible

speech could not be reproduced. Theproblem was simple, minute, and at thesame time monumental. His telephonerelied on its transmitter's diaphragmmaking and breaking contact with theelectrical circuit, just as Bourseulsuggested, and just as the telegraphworked. This approach, however, wascompletely wrong.

Analog transmission. The unmodulated carrieris simply the electricity your phone operateson, the steady and continuous current yourtelephone company provides. It carries the

conversation. Remember, the telephone is anelectrical instrument; electricity works the

phone and it carries your voice. When you talkthe phone impresses your conversation on the

current the telephone company supplies.Conversation causes the current's resistance


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to go up and down, that is, your voice varies ormodulates the carrier, the electricity operating

your phone.

Below is a simplified view of a digitalsignal. Current goes on and off. No wavething. There was no chance the Reistelephone could transmit intelligiblespeech since it could not reproduce ananalog wave, not by making and breakinga circuit. A pulse in this case is not awave! It was not until the early 1960s thatdigital carrier techniques simulated ananalog wave with digital pulses. Even thenthis simulation was only possible bysampling the wave 8,000 times a second.(Producing CD quality sound meanssampling an analog signal 44,000 times asecond.) In these days all traffic inAmerica between telephone switches isdigital, but the majority of local loops areanalog, still carrying your voice to thecentral office on a modulated wave.

Reproducing speech practically relies onthe transmitter making continuous contactwith the electrical circuit. A transmittervaries the electrical current depending onhow much acoustic pressure it gets.Turning the current off and on like atelegraph cannot begin to duplicate speechsince speech, once flowing, is a fluctuatingwave of continuous character; it is not acollection of off and on again pulses. TheReis instrument, in fact, worked onlywhen sounds were so soft that the contactconnecting the transmitter to the circuitremained unbroken. Speech may havetraveled first over a Reis telephonehowever, it would have done soaccidentally and against every principle hethought would make it work. Andalthough accidental discovery is the stuff

of invention, Reis did not realize hismistake, did not understand the principlebehind voice transmission, did not develophis instrument further, nor did he everclaim to have invented the telephone.

The definitive book in English on Reis is:

Thompson, Silvanus P. Phillip Reis: Inventorof The Telephone. E.&F.N. Spon. London.

1883

For other views and explanations of the Reisinstrument, visit Adventures in Cybersound:

http://www.cinemedia.net/SFCV-RMIT-Annex/rnaughton/REIS_BIO.html

In the early 1870s the world still did nothave a working telephone. Inventorsfocused on telegraph improvements sincethese had a waiting market. A good,patentable idea might make an inventormillions. Developing a telephone, on theother hand, had no immediate market, ifone at all. Elisha Gray, Alexander GrahamBell, as well as many others, were insteadtrying to develop a multiplexing telegraph a device to send several messages overone wire at once. Such an instrumentwould greatly increase traffic without thetelegraph company having to build morelines. As it turned out, for both men, thedesire to invent one thing turned into arace to invent something altogetherdifferent. And that is truly the story ofinvention.




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III. The Inventors: Gray and BellElisha Gray was a hard working

professional inventor with some success tohis credit. Born in 1835 in Barnesville,Ohio, Gray was well educated for his time,having worked his way through threeyears at Oberlin College. His firsttelegraph related patent came in 1868. Anexpert electrician, he co-founded Gray andBarton, makers of telegraph equipment.The Western Union Telegraph Company,then funded by the Vanderbilts and J.P.Morgan, bought a one-third interest inGray and Barton in 1872. They thenchanged its name to the Western ElectricManufacturing Company, with Grayremaining an important person in thecompany. To Gray, transmitting speechwas an interesting goal but not one of alifetime.

Alexander Graham Bell, on the otherhand, saw telephony as the driving force inhis early life. He became consumed withinventing the telephone. Born in 1847 inEdinburgh, Scotland, Graham was raisedin a family involved with music and thespoken word. His mother painted andplayed music. His father originated asystem called visible speech that helpedthe deaf to speak. His grandfather was alecturer and speech teacher. Bell's collegecourses included lectures on anatomy andphysiology. His entire education andupbringing revolved around the mechanicsof speech and sound. Many years afterinventing the telephone Bell remarked, "Inow realize that I should never haveinvented the telephone if I had been anelectrician. What electrician would havebeen so foolish as to try any such thing?The advantage I had was that sound had

been the study of my life -- the study ofvibrations."

In 1870 Bell's father moved his familyto Canada after losing two sons totuberculosis. He hoped the Canadianclimate would be healthier. In 1873 Bellbecame a vocal physiology professor atBoston College. He taught the deaf thevisual speech system during the day and atnight he worked on what he called aharmonic or musical telegraph. Familiarwith acoustics, Bell thought he could sendseveral telegraph messages at once byvarying their musical pitch. Sound odd?I'll give you a crude example, a pianoanalogy, since Watson said Bell played thepiano well.

Imagine playing Morse code on thepiano, striking dots and dashes in middleC. Then imagine the instrument wired to adistant piano. Striking middle C in onepiano might cause middle C to sound inthe other. Now, by playing Morse code onthe A or C keys at the same time youmight get the distant piano to duplicateyour playing, sending two messages atonce. Maybe. But probably not. Bell didn'texperiment with pianos, of course, butwith differently pitched magnetic springs.The harmonic telegraph proved simple tothink about, yet maddeningly difficult tobuild. He labored over this devicethroughout the year and well into thespring of 1874.

Then, at a friend's suggestion, heworked that summer on a teaching aid forthe deaf, a gruesome device called thephonoautograph, made out of a dead man'sear. Speaking into the device caused theear's membrane to vibrate and in turn



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move a lever. The lever then wrote awavelike pattern of the speech on smokedglass. Ugh. Many say Bell was fascinatedby how the tiny membrane caused themuch heavier lever to work. It might bepossible, he speculated, to make amembrane work in telephony, by using itto vary an electric current in intensity withthe spoken word. Such a current could

then replicate speech with anothermembrane. Bell had discovered theprinciple of the telephone, the theory ofvariable resistance, as depicted below.[Brooks] But learning to apply thatprinciple correctly would take him anothertwo years.

For information on how closely Amplitude Modulation relates tothe principle of variable resistance, click here

Bell continued harmonic telegraphwork through the fall of 1874. He wasn'tmaking much progress but his tinkeringgathered attention. Gardiner GreeneHubbard, a prominent Boston lawyer andthe president of the Clarke School for TheDeaf, became interested in Bell'sexperiments. He and George Sanders, aprosperous Salem businessman, bothsensed Bell might make the harmonictelegraph work. They also knew Bell theman, since Bell tutored Hubbard'sdaughter and he was helping Sander's deaffive year old son learn to speak.

In October, 1874, Green went toWashington D.C. to conduct a patentsearch. Finding no invention similar toBell's proposed harmonic telegraph,Hubbard and Sanders began funding Bell.All three later signed a formal agreementin February, 1875, giving Bell financialbacking in return for equal shares fromany patents Bell developed. The trio got

along but they would have their problems.Sanders would court bankruptcy byinvesting over $100,000 before any returncame to him. Hubbard, on the other hand,discouraged Bell's romance with hisdaughter until the harmonic telegraph wasinvented. Bell, in turn, would risk hisfunding by working so hard on thetelephone and by getting engaged toMabel without Hubbard's permission.

In the spring of 1875, Bell'sexperimenting picked up quickly with thehelp of a talented young machinist namedThomas A. Watson. Bell feverishlypursued the harmonic telegraph hisbackers wanted and the telephone whichwas now his real interest. Seeking advice,Bell went to Washington D.C. On March1, 1875, Bell met with Joseph Henry, thegreat scientist and inventor, then Secretaryof the Smithsonian Institution. It wasHenry, remember, who pioneeredelectromagnetism and helped Morse with


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the telegraph. Uninterested in Bell'stelegraph work, Henry did say Bell's ideason transmitting speech electricallyrepresented "the germ of a greatinvention." He urged Bell to drop all otherwork and get on with developing thetelephone. Bell said he feared he lackedthe necessary electrical knowledge, towhich the old man replied, "Get it!"[Grosvenor and Wesson] Bell quitpursuing the harmonic telegraph, at leastin spirit, and began working full time onthe telephone.

After lengthy experimenting in thespring of 1875, Bell told Watson "If I canget a mechanism which will make acurrent of electricity vary in its intensity asthe air varies in density when a sound ispassing through it, I can telegraph anysound, even the sound of speech." [Fagen]He communicated the same idea in a letterto Hubbard, who remained unimpressedand urged Bell to work harder on thetelegraph. But having at last articulated theprinciple of variable resistance, Bell wasgetting much closer.

On June 2, 1875, Bell and Watsonwere testing the harmonic telegraph whenBell heard a sound come through thereceiver. Instead of transmitting a pulse,which it had refused to do in any case, thetelegraph passed on the sound of Watsonplucking a tuned spring, one of many set atdifferent pitches. How could that be? Theirtelegraph, like all others, turned current onand off. But in this instance, a contactscrew was set too tightly, allowing currentto run continuously, the essential elementneeded to transmit speech. Bell realizedwhat happened and had Watson build atelephone the next day based on thisdiscovery. The Gallows telephone, socalled for its distinctive frame, substituteda diaphragm for the spring. Yet it didn'twork. A few odd sounds were transmitted,yet nothing more. No speech.Disheartened, tired, and running out of

funds, Bell's experimenting slowedthrough the remainder of 1875.

During the winter of 1875 and 1876Bell continued experimenting whilewriting a telephone patent application.Although he hadn't developed a successfultelephone, he felt he could describe how itcould be done. With his ideas and methodsprotected he could then focus on making itwork. Fortunately for Bell and manyothers, the Patent Office in 1870 droppedits requirement that a working modelaccompany a patent application. OnFebruary 14, 1876, Bell's patentapplication was filed by his attorney. Itcame only hours before Elisha Gray filedhis Notice of Invention for a telephone.

Mystery still surrounds Bell'sapplication and what happened that day. Inparticular, the key point to Bell'sapplication, the principle of variableresistance, was scrawled in a margin,almost as an afterthought. Some think Bellwas told of Gray's Notice then allowed tochange his application. That was neverproved, despite some 600 lawsuits thatwould eventually challenge the patent.Finally, on March 10, 1876, one weekafter his patent was allowed, Bellsucceeded in transmitting speech. He wasnot yet 30. By coincidence or conspiracy,



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Bell used a liquid transmitter, somethinghe hadn't outlined in his patent or eventried before, but something that wasdescribed in Gray's Notice.

The Watson-built telephone lookedodd and acted strangely. Bellowing intothe funnel caused a small disk ordiaphragm at the bottom to move. Thisdisk was, in turn, attached to a wirefloating in an acid-filled metal cup. A wireattached to the cup in turn led to a distantreceiver. As the wire moved up and downit changed the resistance within the liquid.This now varying current was then sent tothe receiver, causing its membrane tovibrate and thereby produce sound. Thistelephone wasn't quite practical; it gotspeech across, but badly. Bell soonimproved it by using an electromagnetictransmitter, a metal diaphragm and apermanent magnet. The telephone hadbeen invented. Now it was time for it toevolve.

How the first telephone worked

Simplified diagram of Bell's liquid transmitter.The diaphragm vibrated with sound waves,causing a conducting rod to move up anddown in a cup of acid water. Battery supplied

power electrified the cup of acid. As the rodrose and fell it changed the circuit'sresistance. This caused the line current to thereceiver (not shown) to fluctuate, which in turncaused the membrane of the receiver tovibrate, producing sound.

This transmitter was quickly droppedin favor of voice powered or inducedmodels. These transmitted speech on theweak electro-magnetic force that thetransmitter and receiver's permanentmagnets produced.

It was not until 1882, with theintroduction of the Blake transmitter, thatBell telephones once again used linepower. The so called local battery circuitused a battery supplied at the phone topower the line and take speech to the localswitch. Voice powered phones did not goaway completely, as some systemscontinued to be used for criticalapplications, those which may have beenthreatened by spark. In 1964 NASA used avoice powered system described asfollows:

"A network of 24 channels with a total of morethan 450 sound powered telephones, which

derive their power solely from the humanvoice, provide the communications between

the East Area central blockhouse (left) and thevarious test stands at NASA's George C.

Marshall Space Flight Center here. . ." Thecomplete article is here:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/scienceservice/007016.htm


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Resources

Brooks, John. Telephone: The FirstHundred Years. New York: Harperand Row, 1975: 41(back to text)

Fagen, M.D., ed. A History ofEngineering and Science in the BellSystem. Volume 1 The Early Years,1875 -1925. New York: BellTelephone Laboratories, 1975, 6 (backto text)

Grosvenor, Edwin S. and MorganWesson. Alexander Graham Bell :TheLife and Times of the Man WhoInvented the Telephone. New York:Abrams, 1997: 55 (back to text)

Rhodes, Beginning of Telephony 4-5,13-14 Bell develops the idea for thetelephone



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IV. The Telephone Evolves

At this point telephone historybecomes fragmented and hard to follow.Four different but related stories begin: (1)the further history of the telephoneinstrument and all its parts, (2) the historyof the telephone business, (3) the historyof telephone related technology and (4) thehistory of the telephone system. Due tolimited space I can cover only some majorNorth American events. Of these, the twomost important developments were theinvention of the vacuum tube and thetransistor; today's telephone system couldnot have been built without them.

Progress cameslowly after theoriginal invention.Bell and Watsonworked constantlyon improving thetelephone's range.They made theirlongest call todate on October 9,1876. It was adistance of onlytwo miles, butthey were sooverjoyed thatlater that nightthey celebrated,doing so muchbegan dancing

that their landlady threatened to throwthem out. Watson later recalled "Bell . . .had a habit of celebrating by what hecalled a war dance and I had got soexposed at it that I could do it quite as wellas he could." [Watson] The rest of 1876,though, was difficult for Bell and hisbackers.

Bell and Watson improved the telephoneand made better models of it, but thesechanges weren't enough to turn thetelephone from a curiosity into a neededappliance. Promoting and developing thetelephone proved far harder than Hubbard,Sanders, or Bell expected. Noswitchboards existed yet, the telephoneswere indeed crude and transmissionquality was poor. Many questioned whyanyone needed a telephone. And despiteBell's patent, broadly covering the entiresubject of transmitting speech electrically,many companies sprang up to selltelephones and telephone service. Inaddition, other people filed applicationsfor telephones and transmitters after Bell'spatent was issued. Most claimed Bell'spatent couldn't produce a workingtelephone or that they had a prior claim.Litigation loomed. Fearing financialcollapse, Hubbard and Sanders offered inthe fall of 1876 to sell their telephonepatent rights to Western Union for$100,000. Western Union refused.

(Special thanks to William Farkas of Ontario,Canada for his remarks and corrections)

On April 27, 1877 Thomas Edisonfiled a patent application for an improvedtransmitter, a device that made thetelephone practical. A majoraccomplishment, Edison's patent claimwas declared in interference to a Notice ofInvention for a transmitter filed just twoweeks before by Emile Berliner. Thisconflict was not resolved until 1886however, Edison decided to produce thetransmitter while the matter was disputed.Production began toward the end of 1877.To compete, Bell soon incorporated in



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their phones an improved transmitterinvented by Francis Blake.

Blake's transmitter relied on thediaphragm modifying an existing electricalcurrent, an outside power source. This wasquite different than the original inventionand its improvements. Bell's firsttelephone transmitter used the humanvoice to generate a weak electro-magneticfield, which then went to a distantreceiver. Bell later installed larger, bettermagnets into his telephones but there wasa limit to what power the human voicecould provide, Myer indicating about 10microwatts. [COMING -- a more detailedexplanation of how the earliest telephonesworked]

On July 9, 1877 Sanders, Hubbard, andBell formed the first Bell telephonecompany. Each assigned their rights underfour basic patents to Hubbard's trusteeship.Against tough criticism, Hubbard decidedto lease telephones and license franchises,instead of selling them. This had enormousconsequences. Instead of making moneyquickly, dollars would flow in overmonths, years, and decades. Products werealso affected, as a lease arrangement

meant telephones needed to be of rentalquality, with innovations introduced onlywhen the equipment was virtually troublefree. It proved a wise enough decision tosustain the Bell System for over a hundredyears.

In September, 1877 Western Unionchanged its mind about telephony. Theysaw it would work and they wanted in,especially after a subsidiary of theirs, theGold and Stock Telegraphy Company,ripped out their telegraphs and startedusing Bell telephones. Rather than buyingpatent rights or licenses from the Bell,Western Union decided to buy patentsfrom others and start their own telephonecompany. They were not alone. At least1,730 telephone companies organized andoperated in the 17 years Bell was supposedto have a monopoly.

Most competitors disappeared as soonas the Bell Company filed suit againstthem for patent infringement, but manyremained. They either disagreed withBell's right to the patent, ignored italtogether, or started a phone companybecause Bell's people would not provideservice to their area. In any case, WesternUnion began entering agreements withGray, Edison, and Amos E. Dolbear fortheir telephone inventions. In December,1877 Western Union created the AmericanSpeaking Telephone Company. Atremendous selling point for theirtelephones was Edison's improvedtransmitter. Bell Telephone was deeplyworried since they had installed only 3,000phones by the end of 1877. WesternUnion, on the other hand, had 250,000miles of telegraph wire strung over100,000 miles of route. If not stopped,they would have an enormous head starton making telephone service availableacross the country. Though Western Unionwas then the world's largest telecomcompany, with an unchallenged monopolyon telegraph service, Bell's shrewd Boston



Page 15

lawyers filed suit against them the nextyear.

On January, 28 1878 , the firstcommercial switchboard began operatingin New Haven, Connecticut. It served 21telephones on 8 lines consequently, manypeople were on a party line. On February17, Western Union opened the first largecity exchange in San Francisco. No longerlimited to people on the same wire, folkscould now talk to many others on differentlines. The public switched telephonenetwork was born. Other innovationsmarked 1878.

For a detailed history of telephone exchanges,particularly dial, please see R.B. Hill'sexcellent history:

http://www.privateline.com/EarlyWork.html

On February 21, 1878, the world's firsttelephone directory came out, a singlepaper of only fifty names. George WilliardCoy and a group of investors in the NewHaven District Telephone Company at 219Chapel Street produced it. It was followedquickly by a Boston Telephone DispatchCompany's listing. [First directory]

In 1878 President Rutheford B. Hayesadministration installed the first telephonein the White House. [First tele] MaryFinch Hoyt reports that the first outgoingcall went to Alexander Graham Bellhimself, thirteen miles distant. Hayes firstwords instructed Bell to speak moreslowly. [Hoyt]

In that year the Butterstamp telephonecame into use. This telephone combinedthe receiver and transmitter into onehandheld unit. You talked into one end,turned the instrument round and listened tothe other end. People got confused withthis clumsy arrangement, consequently, atelephone with a second transmitter andreceiver unit was developed in the sameyear. You could use either one to talk orlisten and you didn't have to turn them

around. This wall set used a crank tosignal the operator.

The Butterstamp telephone. Picture takenfrom a great page of telephone pictures.

Please visit:

http://www.voicendata.com/aug98/snap.html

For another great page on the earliestcommercial telephones go here:

http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/coffin.html

On August 1, 1878 Thomas Watsonfiled for a ringer patent. Similar to Henry'sclassroom doorbell, a hammer operated byan electromagnet struck two bells. Turninga crank on the calling telephone spun amagneto, producing an alternating orringing current. Previously, people used acrude thumper to signal the called party,hoping someone would be around to hearit. The ringer was an immediate success.Bell himself became more optimistic aboutthe telephone's future, propheticallywriting in 1878 "I believe that in thefuture, wires will unite the head offices ofthe Telephone Company in different cities,and that a man in one part of the countrymay communicate by word of mouth withanother in a distant place."

Subscribers, meanwhile, grew steadilybut slowly. Sanders had invested $110,000by early 1878 without any return. Helocated a group of New Englanders willingto invest but unwilling to do businessoutside their area. Needing the funding,


http://www.privateline.com/EarlyWork.html

http://www.voicendata.com/aug98/snap.html

http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/coffin.html


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the Bell Telephone Company reorganizedin June, 1878, forming a new BellTelephone Company as well as the NewEngland Telephone Company, aforerunner of the strong regional Bellcompanies to come. 10,755 Bell phoneswere now in service. Reorganizing passedcontrol to an executive committee, endingHubbard's stewardship but not his overallvision. For Hubbard's last act was to hire afar seeing general manager namedTheodore Vail. But the corporate shufflewasn't over yet. In early 1879 the companyreorganized once again, under pressurefrom patent suits and competition fromother companies selling phones withEdison's superior transmitter.Capitalization was $850,000. William H.Forbes was elected to head the board ofdirectors. He soon restructured it toembrace all Bell interests into a singlecompany, the National Bell Company,incorporated on March 13, 1879. Growthwas steady enough, however, that in late1879 the first telephone numbers wereused.

On November 10, 1879 Bell won itspatent infringement suit against WesternUnion in the United States Supreme Court.In the resulting settlement, Western Uniongave up its telephone patents and the56,000 phones it managed, in return for20% of Bell rentals for the 17 year life ofBell's patents. It also retained its telegraphbusiness as before. This decision soenlarged National Bell that a new entitywith a new name, American BellCompany, was created on February 20,1880, capitalized with over seven milliondollars. Bell now managed 133,000telephones. As Chief Operating Officer,Theodore Vail began creating the BellSystem, composed of regional companiesoffering local service, a long distancecompany providing toll service, and amanufacturing arm providing equipment.For the manufacturer he turned to aprevious company rival. In 1880 Vailstarted buying Western Electric stock and

took controlling interest on November,1881. The takeover was consummated onFebruary 26, 1882, with Western Electricgiving up its remaining patent rights aswell as agreeing to produce productsexclusively for American Bell. It was notuntil 1885 that Vail would form his longdistance telephone company. It was calledAT&T.

On July 19,1881 Bell wasgranted apatent for themetallic circuit,the concept oftwo wiresconnectingeach telephone.Until that timea single ironwire connectedtelephonesubscribers,just like atelegraph

circuit. A conversation works over onewire since grounding each end provides acomplete path for an electrical circuit. Buthouses, factories and the telegraph systemwere all grounding their electrical circuitsusing the same earth the telephonecompany employed. A huge amount ofstatic and noise was consequentlyintroduced by using a grounded circuit. Ametallic circuit, on the other hand, usedtwo wires to complete the electricalcircuit, avoiding the ground altogether andthus providing a better sounding call.

The brilliant J.J. Carty introduced twowireservice commercially in October ofthat year on a circuit between Boston andProvidence. It cut noise greatly over thoseforty five miles and heralded thebeginning of long distance service. Still, itwas not until 10 years later that Bellstarted converting grounded circuits tometallic ones. And ten years after thatuntil completion.



Page 17

Depending on local conditions andeconomies, some independent telephonecompanies did not introduce two wire fordecades after. Consider this example fromthe Magazine Telephone Company ofcentral Arkansas: "After the end of WWII, the R.E.A. System was introduced tothe area. This electrification projectinduced noise into the one wire magnetosystem that was currently in use by theTelephone Company. Henry [Stone]converted the magneto system to a newsystem called common battery. Instead ofjust one wire, common battery requiredtwo metallic wires for each circuit."

For a short but well detailed history of anindependent telco, visit the Magazine

Telephone Company:

http://www.cei.net/~magtel/Magtel/heritage.htm

On February 28, 1885 AT&T wasborn. Capitalized on only $100,000,American Telephone and Telegraphprovided long distance service forAmerican Bell. Only local telephonecompanies operating under Bell grantedlicenses could connect to AT&T's longdistance network. Vail thought this wouldcontinue the Bell System's virtualmonopoly after its key patents expired inthe 1890s. He reasoned the independentscould not compete since they would beisolated and without long distance lines.With licensed companies providing localservice, Western Electric manufacturingequipment and AT&T providing longdistance, Vail's structuring of the BellSystem was now complete.

In September 1887, Vail resigned fromAmerican Bell. They lost a great man. Hewas at odds with Bell's Boston bankers andfinanciers, people who often ignored anarea if profits might be marginal. J. EdwardHyde explained the situation best:

"The singular worship of profits sodisgusted Theodore Vail that he leftthe Bell Company in 1887. As a

parting shot, he wrote: 'We have aduty to the public at large to makeour service as good as possible andas universal as possible, and thatearnings should be used not only toreward investors for their investmentbut also to accomplish theseobjectives.' Bell managementthanked him for his comments andwished him a happy retirement.Those he left behind had neither hisvisionary business sense nor hissensible principles of customerservice. Ignoring the protests ofcustomers regarding exorbitantrates and the pleas of rural areas forservice at any price, Bell'sleadership plundered selectedprofitable areas during theremaining years of their exclusiveownership without realizing that theywere pinning a target on their ownchest in the neglected regions.Undoubtedly Bell's managementsuspected that bad times lay just onthe other side of the initial patentexpiration. Incredibly, they didnothing to prevent the deluge. In thecities where the Bell had its biggeststake, competitors appeared onnearly every corner."

In 1889 the first public coin telephonecame into use in Hartford, Connecticut.The first payphones were attended, withpayment going to someone standingnearby.

In 1892 Bell controlled 240,000telephones. But the independents werecoming on fast, especially by using bettertechnology. The first automatic dialsystem began operating that year in LaPorte, Indiana. The central office switchworked in concert with a similar switch atthe subscriber's home, operated by pushbuttons. Patented in 1891 by Almon B.Strowger, this Step by Step or SXSsystem, replaced the switchboard operatorfor placing local calls. People could dialthe number themselves. The firstautomatic commercial exchange beganoperating in La Porte, Indiana in 1892.

Strowger's switch required differentkinds of telephones and eventually models


http://www.cei.net/~magtel/Magtel/heritage.htm


Page 18

with dials. A.E. Keith, J. Erickson and C.J.Erickson later invented the rotating finger-wheel needed for a dial. The first dialtelephones began operating inMilwaukee's City Hall in 1896.Independents were quick to start using thenew switch and phones.

The Bell System however, did notembrace this switch or automation ingeneral, indeed, a Bell franchisecommonly removed "Steppers" and dialtelephones in territories it bought fromindependent telephone companies. Notuntil 1919 did the Bell System start usingStrowgers durable and efficient switchingsystem. This tardiness contributed to Bell'spoor reputation around the turn of thecentury. Almon Strowger went on to helpform Automatic Electric, the largesttelephone equipment manufacturer for theindependent telephone companies.

[First tele] From the official White Houseweb site biography on President Hayes:http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/rh19.html (2000) (back totext)

[First directory] Stern and Gwathmey.Once Upon a Telephone: An IllustratedSocial History. New York. Harcourt Braceand Company. 1994, 46 [back to text]

[Hoyt] Finch, Mary Hoyt "Hello, This isthe White House." Good Housekeeping,June 1986 (back to text)

Watson, Thomas. Exploring Life: TheAutobiography of Thomas Alva Watson.New York: D. Appleton and Company.1926, 95 (back to text)



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At this time we should look atStrowger's achievement, before continuingour narrative. The automatic dial system,after all, changed telephony forever.Almon Brown Strowger (pronouncedSTRO-jer) was born in 1839 in Penfield,New York, a close suburb of Rochester.Like Bell, Strowger was not a professionalinventor, but a man with a keen interest inthings mechanical. Swihart says he went toan excellent New York State university,served in the Civil War from 1861 to 1865(ending as a lieutenant), taught school inKansas and Ohio afterwards, and woundup first in Topeka and then Kansas City asan undertaker in 1886. This unlikelyprofession of an inventor so inspiredseems odd indeed, but the storiessurrounding his motivation to invent theautomatic switch are odder still.

Thanks to Joe Oster for supplying Strowger'sbirthplace

The many stories suggest, none ofwhich I can confirm, that someone wasstealing Almon Strowger's business.Telephone operators, perhaps in leaguewith his competitors, were routing calls toother undertakers. These operators,supposedly, gave busy signals tocustomers calling Strowger or evendisconnected their calls. Strowger thusinvented a system to replace an operatorfrom handling local calls. In thedistillation of these many stories, StephanLesher relates a story from Almon's timein Topeka:

"In his book, Good Connections,telephone historian Dave Park writesthat Strowger grew darkly suspiciouswhen a close friend in Topeka diedand the man's family delivered thebody to a rival mortician. Strowgercontended that an operator at the newtelephone exchange had intentionally

directed the call to a competitor -- anallegation that gave rise to tales thatthe operator was either married to, orthe daughter of, a competingundertaker."

Whatever the circumstances, we doknow that anti-Bell System sentiment ranhigh at this time, that good telephoneinventions commanded ready money, andthat Strowger did have numerous problemswith his local telephone company.Strowger was a regular complainer andone complaint stands out.

Swihart describes how SouthwesternBell personnel were called out to onceagain visit Strowger's business, to fix adead line. The cause turned out to be ahanging sign which flapped in the breezeagainst exposed telephone contacts. Thisshorted the line. Once the sign wasremoved the line worked again. It may besupposed that this sort of problem wasbeyond a customer's ability to diagnose,that Strowger had a legitimate complaint.But on this occasion Southwestern Bell'sassistant general manager, a one HermanRitterhoff, was along with the repair crew.Strowger invited the man inside andshowed him a model for an automaticswitch. So Strowger was working on theproblem for quite some time and was nonovice to telephone theory.

Brooks says that, in fact, Strowgerknew technology so well that he built hispatent on Bell system inventions. It mustbe pointed out, however, that everyinventor draws ideas and inspiration frompreviously done work. Brooks saysspecifically that the Connolly-McTighepatent (Patent number 222, 458, datedDecember 9, 1879) helped Strowger, afailed dial switchboard, as well as an early


http://www.siemenscom.com/customer/9801/11.html



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automatic switch developed by ErzaGilliland. But Strowger did not build theinstrument since he did not have themechanical skills. A rather cluelessjeweler was employed instead to build thefirst model, and much time was wastedwith this man, getting him to followinstructions.

As with Bell, Strowger filed his patentwithout having perfected a workinginvention. Yet he described the switch insufficient detail and with enough novelpoints for it to be granted Patent number447,918, on March 10, 1891. And in afurther parallel with Bell, Almon Strowgerlost interest in the device once he got itbuilt. It fell upon his brother, Walter S.Strowger, to carry development andpromotion further, along with a great man,Joseph Harris, who also helped withpromotion and investment money. WithoutHarris, soon to be the organizer andguiding force behind Automatic Electric,dial service may have taken decadeslonger for the Bell System to recognizeand develop. Competition by A.E. forcedthe Bell System to play switching catch-up, something they really onlyaccomplished in the 1940s with theintroduction of crossbar. And with only afew references to interrupt, let us return tothe narrative.

For those interested in a fine one pagesummary of Almon Strowger, visit


Need something technical on Strowger'swork? Try Hill's work which is in hardcopy.

Click here.

I've put R.B. Hill's article on line:

http://www.privateline.com/Switching/EarlyYears.html

In 1893 the first central officeexchange with a common battery fortalking and signaling began operating inLexington, Massachusetts. This commonbattery arrangement provided electricity to

all telephones controlled by the centraloffice. Each customer's telephonepreviously needed its own battery toprovide power. Common battery had manyconsequences, including changingtelephone design. The big and bulky wallsets with wet batteries providing powerand cranks to signal the operator could bereplaced with sleek desk sets. I'll covertelephone design in another chapter, but,briefly, there were four great overlappingeras in telephone development: Invention,Crank, Dial and Handset. They went from,respectively, 1876 to 1893, 1877 to 1943,1919 to 1978 and 1924 to the present.

For more on common battery and the lastmanual switchboard to be retired in America,

click here

In 1897 Milo Gifford Kellogg foundedthe Kellogg Switchboard and SupplyCompany near Chicago. Kellogg was a"graduate engineer and accomplishedcircuit designer"[Pleasance], who beganhis career in 1870 with Gray and Barton,equipment manufacturers for WesternElectric. There he developed WesternElectric's best telephone switchboards: astandard model and a multipleswitchboard. Both were invented in 1879and patented in 1881 and 1884,respectively. He retired from WesternElectric in 1885, "and began making andpatenting a series of telephone inventionsof his own, which work extended over aperiod of 12 years and which culminatedin the issue of 125 patents to him onOctober 17, 1897, besides which over 25had previously been issued tohim."[Telephony] He was also quitepolitical, successfully winning suitsagainst Bell and delaying other Bellactions to his benefit. Telecom Historycalled him "probably the man in theAmerican independent telephone businesswho first placed himself in opposition tothe Bell Company."[Telephony]



http://www.privateline.com/Switching/EarlyYears.html

http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory5/History5.htm#anchor378760

http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory/History1.htm#anchor521744


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His major accomplishment was the socalled divided-multiple switchboard, ofwhich two were built. One was sold to theCuyahoga Telephone Company ofCleveland, Ohio and the other to theKinloch Telephone company of SaintLouis. The Cleveland installation boasted9,600 lines, with an ultimate capacity of24,000! Such large switchboards wereneeded to handle increasing demand. TheKellog boards were much larger than Bellequipment, mostly designed by CharlesScribner. Saint Louis and Detroitindependents started switching to Kellogboards, "threaten[ing] Bell's profitableurban markets."[Grosvenor] Under suchpressure and once again running out ofmoney, Bell regrouped.

In 1899 American Bell TelephoneCompany reorganized yet once again. In amajor change, American Bell TelephoneCompany conveyed all assets, with theexception of AT&T stock, to the NewYork state charted American Telephoneand Telegraph Company. It was figuredthat New York had less restrictivecorporate laws than Massachusetts. TheAmerican Bell Telephone Company namepassed into history.

In 1900 loading coils came into use.Patented by Professor Michael I. Pupin,loading coils helped improve long distancetransmission. Spaced every three to sixthousand feet, cable circuits were extendedthree to four times their previous length.Essentially a small electro-magnet, aloading coil or inductance coil strengthensthe transmission line by decreasingattenuation, the normal loss of signalstrength over distance. Wired into thetransmission line, these electromagneticloading coils keep signal strength up aseasily as an electromagnet pulls a weightoff the ground. But coils must be the rightsize and carefully spaced to avoiddistortion and other transmissionproblems.

This is an excellent book on loading coils andearly long distance working -- a great read:

Wasserman, Neil. From Invention toInnovation: Long Distance Telephone

Transmission at The Turn of the Century. JohnHopkins University Press. Baltimore: 1985

In 1901 the Automatic ElectricCompany was formed from AlmonStrowger's original company. The onlymaker of dial telephone equipment at thetime, Automatic Electric grew quickly.The Bell System's Western Electric wouldnot sell equipment to the independents,consequently, A.E. and then makers likeKellog and Stromberg-Carlson foundready acceptance. Desperate to fight offthe rising independent tide, the BellSystem concocted a wild and devious plan.AT&T's president Fredrick Fish approveda secret plan to buy out the KellogSwitchboard and Supply Company and putit under Bell control. Kellog wouldcontinue selling their major switchboardsto the independents for a year. At that timethe Bell System would file a patent suitagainst Kellog, which they wouldintentionally loose. This would force theindependents to rip out their newlyinstalled switchboards, crushing the largestindependents. The plan was discovered,aborted, and further scandalizedAT&T.[Grosvenor2]

By 1903 independent telephonesnumbered 2,000,000 while Bell managed1,278,000. Bell's reputation for high pricesand poor service continued. As bankersgot hold of the company, the Bell Systemfaltered.

In 1907 Theodore Vail returned to theAT&T as president, pressured by noneother than J.P. Morgan himself, who hadgained financial control of the BellSystem. A true robber baron, Morganthought he could turn the Bell System intoAmerica's only telephone company. Tothat end he bought independents by thedozen, adding them to Bell's existing


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regional telephone companies. The chartshows how AT&T management finallyorganized the regional holding companiesin 1911, a structure that held up over thenext seventy years. But Morgan wasn'tfinished yet. He also worked on buying allof Western Union, acquiring 30% of itsstock in 1909, culminating that action byinstalling Vail as its president. For his part,Vail thought telephone service was anatural monopoly, much as gas or electricservice. But he also knew times werechanging and that the present systemcouldn't continue.

In January 1913 the JusticeDepartment informed the Bell System thatthe company was close to violating theSherman Antitrust Act. Vail knew thingswere going badly with the government,especially since the Interstate CommerceCommission had been looking into AT&Tacquisitions since 1910. J.P. Morgan diedin March, 1913; Vail lost a good ally andthe strongest Bell system monopolyadvocate. In a radical but visionary move,Vail cut his losses with a bold plan. OnDecember 19, 1913, AT&T agreed to riditself of Western Union stock, buy nomore independent telephone companieswithout government approval and tofinally connect the independents withAT&T's long distance lines. Rather thanlet the government remake the BellSystem, Vail did the job himself.

Known as the Kingsbury agreementfor the AT&T vice president who wrotethe historic letter of agreement to theJustice Department, Vail ended any plansfor a complete telecommunicationsmonopoly. But with the independentspaying a fee for each long distance callplaced on its network, and with the threatof governmental control eased, the BellSystem grew to be a de facto monopolywithin the areas it controlled,accomplishing by craft what force couldnot do. Interestingly, although the BellSystem would service eighty three percent

of American telephones, it nevercontrolled more than thirty percent of theUnited States geographical area. To thisday, 1,435 independent telephonecompanies still exist, often serving ruralareas the Bell System ignored. Vail'srestructuring was so successful it lasteduntil modern times. In 1976, on thehundredth anniversary of the Bell System,AT&T stood as the richest company onearth.

In 1906 Lee De Forest invented theelectron tube. Its amplifying properties ledthe way to national phone service. Longdistance service was still limited. Loadingcoils helped to a point but no further.Transcontinental phone traffic wasn'tpossible, consequently, a national networkwas beyond reach. Something else wasneeded. In 1907 Theodore Vail instructedAT&T's research staff to build anelectronic amplifier based on their ownfindings and De Forest's pioneering work.They made some progress but not as muchas De Forest did on his own.

A nice De Forest biography is at:

http://www.cinemedia.net/SFCV-RMIT-Annex/rnaughton/DE_FOREST_BIO.html

The site also includes the photograph below.

AT&T eventually bought his patentrights to use the tube as a telephoneamplifier. Only after this and a year ofinspecting De Forest's equipment did theBell Telephone Laboratory make thetriode, an amplifying electron tube, workfor telephony. Those years of research


http://www.cinemedia.net/SFCV-RMIT-Annex/rnaughton/DE_FOREST_BIO.html


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were worth it. The triode in particular andvacuum tubes in general, would makepossible radiotelephony, microwavetransmission, radar, television, andhundreds of other technologies. Telephonerepeaters could now span the country,enabling a nationwide telephone system,fulfilling Alexander Graham Bell's 1878vision.

Recalling those years in an importantinterview with the IEEE, LloydEspenschied recounts "In May [1907],several of us had gone to a lecture that LeeDe Forest had given on wireless at theBrooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Inthis lecture, he passed around a queer littletube to all the audience. It was the firstthree-element tube to be shown in public, Ifound out afterwards. He passed thisaround and everybody looked at it andsaid, "So what!" Even De Forest said thathe didn't know what it was all about. Helooked on it as a detector. Actually it wasan evolution of the Fleming valve, but hewould never give credit to anyone." Laterin the interview, Espenschied gives anopinion of De Forest shared by many atthe time, "No, he was no engineer. He wasjust a playboy all his life. He's just plainlucky that he stumbled into the three-element device. Just plain lucky. But thatwas handed to him for persevering; hekept at it, grabbing and grabbing at all thepatent applications without knowing whathe was doing."

For more quotes like the above and a greatoral history of early electronic and vacuum

tube experimenting:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/

transcripts/espenschied11.html

The vacuum tube repeater ushered inthe electronics age. The device was a trueamplifier, powered by an external source,capable of boosting strength as high asneeded. A power source provides energyto a filament or cathode within a triodevalve or vacuum tube. That's the glow you

see in a tube. When heated the cathodegives off huge amounts of negativeelectrons. A positively charged plate asmall distance away draws the negativeelectrons to it, much like a negative andpositive magnet attract each other. Anelectrical field is formed, causing electronsto leap across the gap. The triode's thirdpart is a grid or control grid, which carriesin our case a weak phone conversation. Itsits between the cathode and the plate, thecircuit so built that the grid becomesnegatively charged. As the positivelycharged plate collects electrons thenegatively charged stream from thecathode washes over the grid. The electronstream thus gathers the signal, impressingit on the outgoing flow. While the originalsignal strength stays the same, it iseffectively amplified by being on a highervoltage. Take a moment to ponder thediagram.

Did you know? A triode is sometimes called athermionic valve. Thermions are electrons

derived from a heated source. A valvedescribes the tube's properties: current flowsin one direction but not the other. Think of a

faucet, a type of control valve, letting water goin only one direction.


http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/


Page 24

How does a triode work?

Special thanks to John Wong for his gracioushelp with this vacuum tube explanation

For more comments, read Ray Strackbein'scomments below

As evidence of the triode's success, onJanuary 25, 1915 the first transcontinentaltelephone line opened between New YorkCity and San Francisco. The previous longdistance limit was New York to Denver,and only then with some shouting. Two

metallic circuits made up the line; it used2,500 tons of hard-drawn copper wire,130,000 poles and countless loading coils.Three vacuum tube repeaters along theway boosted the signal. It was the world'slongest telephone line. In a grandceremony, 68 year old Alexander GrahamBell in New York City made theceremonial first call to his old friendThomas Watson in San Francisco. In aninsult to Lee de Forest, the great inventorwas not invited to participate. This insult



Page 25

was carried over to the 1915 World's Fairin San Francisco, in which AT&T's theaterexhibit heralded coast to coast telephoneservice without mentioning the man whomade it possible. [Morgan]

In 1921 theBell Systemintroducedthe firstcommercialpanel switch,an odd beastif there everwas one.Developedover eightyears, it wasAT&T'sresponse tothe step by

step switch so favored by theindependents. It offered many innovationsand many problems. Although customerscould dial out themselves, the number ofparts and its operating method made itnoisy for callers. Ironically, someswitchmen say it was a quiet machineinside the central office, emanating "acollection of simply delightful 'clinking,''whirring' and 'squeak, squeak, squeak'noises." Working like a game of Snakesand Ladders, the switch used selectors toconnect calls, these mechanical armsmoving up and down in large banks ofcontacts. When crossbar switching cameon the scene in 1938, panel switches wereremoved where possible, although someremained working until the mid 1970s.Panel became the first defunct switch inthe public switched telephone network.

For a wonderful history of early electronicpioneering, click here for a must read interview

with Ray Sears:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/sears.html

Resources

Grosvenor, Edwin S. and Morgan Wesson.Alexander Graham Bell: The Life andTimes of the Man Who Invented theTelephone. Harry N. Abrams, New York(1997) 167 Excellent. (back to text)

Grosvenor2. ibid, 167 (back to text)

Brooks, John. Telephone: The FirstHundred Years. Harper & Row, NewYork. 1975, 1976: 100

Hill, R.B. "The Early Years of theStrowger System" The Bell LaboratoriesRecord March, 1953: 95 (back to text)

Morgan, Jane. Electronics In The West:The First Fifty Years, National PressBooks, Palo Alto. 1967: p63. (back to text)

Swihart, Stanley. "The First AutomaticTelephone Systems" Telecom History:The Journal of The Telephone HistoryInstitute No. 2. Spring, 1995: 3 (back totext)

Pleasance, Charles A., "The DividedMultiple Switchboard" Telecom History:The Journal of The Telephone HistoryInstitute 1 (1994) 102 (back to text)

"Well-Known Heads of Well-KnownHouses", Telephony (July, 1901) Asreprinted in Telecom History: The Journalof The Telephone History Institute 1(1994) 93 (back to text)

ibid 93 (back to text)

Ray Strackbein ofhttp:///www.strackbein.com adds thefollowing comments to the vacuumdiscussion:

"On your diagram of the VacuumTube, remove the reference to "120volts" on the filament. Some oldertubes used common filaments andcathodes, but a long time ago


http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/sears.html

http://www.strackbein.com


Page 26

(certainly before 1950), someonediscovered that since filament voltagewas usually A.C., having a separatecathode would reduce the amount of60-cycle hum being amplified by thetube (whether diode, triode, tetrode, orpentode). The filament voltage wasusually 6.3 or 12.6 VAC that came offof the filament winding of the samepower transformer that used adifferent winding to supply the systemplate voltage to a rectifier (often a 5U4vacuum tube) to be filtered withelectrolytic capacitors to becomereasonably pure DC of between about200 to 500 VDC."

"The first numbered part of a vacuumtube part number told the voltage onthe filament. For example, a 5U4 hada 5-volt filament, a 6SN7, 6AL5, and a6U8 had 6.3 volt filaments, a 12SN7,12AX7, and 12AT7 had 12.6 voltfilaments. So simply remove that 120volt filament reference and you will befine."

Oh yes, I was once the Chief Engineerof a TV station that used 6 tubes inthe final circuit that each took 120Amps at 5 volts on their filaments.They ran rather warm." (back to text)



Page 27


In January, 1927, commercial longdistance radio-telephone service wasintroduced between the United States andGreat Britain. AT&T and the BritishPostal Office got it on the air after fouryears of experimenting. They expanded itlater to communicate with Canada,Australia, South Africa, Egypt and Kenyaas well as ships at sea. This service hadfourteen dedicated channels or frequencieseventually assigned to it. The overseastransmitter was at Rugby, England, andthe United States transmitter was at Deal,New Jersey. [BLR] Nearly fifty yearswould pass before the first telephone cablewas laid under the Atlantic, greatlyexpanding calling capacity. In the nextyear The Great Depression began, hittingindependent telephone companies hard,including the manufacturer AutomaticElectric.

Although telephones had been used inthe White House for many years, theinstrument did not reach the president'sdesk until the Hoover administration at thestart of the Great Depression. "In 1929,when the Executive Offices wereremodeled the historic one-positionswitchboard which had served for so manyyears was retired from service and a newtwo-position switchboard, especially builtto meet the President's needs, wasinstalled. The number of stations wasmaterially increased in addition to manyspecial circuits for the use of the President.It was at this time a telephone wasinstalled on the President's desk for thefirst time." [Hoover Library]

Thanks to L. Nickel for researching this point

In 1934 a New Deal measure enactedthe Federal Communications Commission,an agency that dogged the Bell System's

heels until its end. The FCC beganinvestigating AT&T as well as every othertelephone company. The FCC issued a'Proposed Report' after four years, inwhich its commissioner excoriated AT&Tfor, among other things, unjustifiableprices on basic phone service. Thecommissioner also urged the governmentto regulate prices the Bell System paidWestern Electric for equipment, indeed,even suggesting AT&T should let othercompanies bid on Western Electric work.The Bell System countered each point ofthe FCC's report in their 1938 AnnualReport, however, it was clear thegovernment was now closely looking atwhether the Bell System's structure wasgood for America. At that time AT&Tcontrolled 83 percent of United Statestelephones, 91 percent of telephone plantand 98 percent of long distance lines. Onlythe outbreak of World War II, two and ahalf months after the final report wasissued in 1939, staved off closegovernment scrutiny.

In 1937 coaxial cable was installedbetween Toledo, Ohio and South Bend,Indiana. Long distance lines began movingunderground, a big change from overheadlines carried on poles. In that same yearthe first commercial messages usingcarrier techniques were sent through thecoax, based on transmission techniquesinvented by Lloyd Espenschied andHerman A. Affel. Multiplexing let tollcircuits carry several calls over one cablesimultaneously. It was so successful thatby the mid 1950s seventy nine percent ofBell's inter city trunks were multiplexed.The technology eventually moved into thelocal network, improving to the pointwhere it could carry 13,000 channels atonce.



Page 28

Much telephone progress slowed asWorld War II began. But one majoraccomplishment was directly related to it.On May 1, 1943 the longest open wirecommunication line in the world beganoperating between Edmonton, Alberta andFairbanks, Alaska. Built alongside thenewly constructed Alaskan Highway, theline was 1500 miles long, used 95,000poles and featured 23 manned repeaterstations. Fearing its radio and submarinecable communications to Alaska might beintercepted by the Japanese, the UnitedStates built the line to provide a moresecure communication link from Alaska tothe United States.

For more information on Lloyd Espenchied'sbrilliant career, go here:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/espenschied11.ht

ml

In 1938 retractile, spring, or spiralcords were introduced into the BellSystem. A single cotton bundle containingthe handset's four wires were fashionedinto a spiral. This reduced the twisting andcurling of conventional flat or braidedcords. Spiral cords were popularimmediately. AT&T's Events inTelecommunication History [ETH]reported that introduction began in April,with Western Electric providing 6,000cords by November. Still, even with W.E.then producing 1,000 cords a week, thecords could not be kept in stock.

Thanks to Cliff Kennedy ofRoseville Telephone Company for helping

date the spiral cord's introduction

In 1938 the Bell System introducedcrossbar switching to the central office, asystem as excellent as the panel switchwas miserable. The first No. 1 crossbarwas cut into service at the Troy Avenuecentral office in Brooklyn, New York onFebruary 13th.This culminated a trialbegun in October 1937. [ETH]A detail ofa crossbar switch is shown on the right.

Western Electric's models earned aworldwide reputation for ruggedness andflexibility. AT&T improved on work doneby the brilliant Swedish engineer GotthilfAnsgarius Betulander. They even sent ateam to Sweden to look at his crossbarswitch. Installed by the hundreds inmedium to large cities, crossbartechnology advanced in development andpopularity until 1978, when over 28million Bell system lines were connectedto one. That compares to panel switchinglines which peaked in 1958 at 3,838,000and step by step lines peaking in 1973 at24,440,000.

Note the crossbar's watch-likecomplexity in the diagram. Currentmoving through the switch moved theseelectro-mechanical relays back and forth,depending on the dial pulses received.Despite its beauty, these switches werebulky, complicated and costly. The nextinvention we look at would in time sweepall manual and electro-mechanicalswitching away.

Resources

[BLR] "The Opening of TransatlanticService on Shortwaves" 6 BellLaboratories Record 1928: 405 (back totext)


http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/espenschied11.html

http://www.btinternet.com/~aero/tele321.htm

http://www.btinternet.com/~aero/tele321.htm


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[Hoover Library] Personal correspondencefrom the Hoover Library<[email protected]> to L. Nickel(10/19/2000)" (back to text)

[ETH] Events in TelecommunicationHistory, AT&T Archives Publication:Warren, New Jersey (8.92-2M), p53(backto text)



Page 30


On July 1, 1948 theBell System unveiled thetransistor, a joint inventionof Bell Laboratoriesscientists WilliamShockley, John Bardeen,and Walter Brattain. Itwould revolutionize everyaspect of the telephoneindustry and all ofcommunications. Oneengineer remarked,"Asking us to predict whattransistors will do is like asking the manwho first put wheels on an ox cart toforesee the automobile, the wristwatch, orthe high speed generator." Others wereless restrained. In 1954, recently retiredChief of Engineering for AT&T, Dr.Harold Osborne, predicted, "Let us saythat in the ultimate, whenever a baby isborn anywhere in the world, he is given atbirth a number which will be his telephonenumber for life. As soon as he can talk, heis given a watchlike device with 10 littlebuttons on one side and a screen on theother. Thus equipped, at any time when hewishes to talk with anyone in the world, hewill pull out the device and punch on thekeys the number of his friend. Thenturning the device over, he will hear thevoice of his friend and see his face on thescreen, in color and in three dimensions. Ifhe does not see and hear him he will knowthat the friend is dead." [Conly]Sheesh.

The first transistor looking as crude,perhaps, as the first telephone. Notice howsimilar the three leads or contacts appearcompared to the triode below. The pointcontact transistor pictured here is nowobsolete.

Capitalizing on a flowing stream ofelectrons, much like the vacuum tube,along with the special characteristics ofsilicon and germanium, the transistordependably amplified and switched signalswhile producing little heat. Equipment sizewas reduced and reliability increased.



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Hearing aids, radios, phonographs,computers, electronic telephone switchingequipment, satellites and moon rocketswould all be improved or made possiblebecause of the transistor. Let's departagain from the narrative to see how atransistor works.

Transistor stands for transit resistor,the temporary name, now permanent, thatthe inventors gave it. Thesesemiconductors, like the triode, control theelectrical current flowing between twoterminals by applying voltage to a thirdterminal. You now have a miniatureswitch, presenting either a freeway toelectrons or a brick wall to them,depending on whether a signal voltageexists. Bulky mechanical relays that usedto switch calls, like the crossbar shownabove, could now be replaced withtransistors. There's more.

Transistors also amplify. Like thetriode described before, a weak signal canbe boosted tremendously. Let's say youhave ten watts flowing into one side of thetransistor. Your current stops becausesilicon normally isn't a good conductor.You now introduce a signal into themiddle of the transistor, say, at one watt.That changes the transistor's internalcrystalline structure, causing the silicon togo from an insulator to a conductor. It nowallows the larger current to go through,picking up your weak signal along theway, impressing it on the larger voltage.Your one watt signal is now a ten wattsignal.

Transistors use the same magneticprinciples we've discussed before, "theattractive and repulsive forces betweenelectrical charges." But they also use theproperties of semi-conductors, seeminglyinnocuous materials like geranium andnow mostly silicon. Materials like silverand copper conduct electricity well.Rubber and porcelain conduct electricitypoorly. The difference between electrical

conductors and insulators is theirmolecular structure, the stuff that makesthem up. Weight, size, or shape doesn'tmatter, it's how tightly the material holdson to its electrons, preventing them fromfreely flowing through its atoms.

Silicon by itself is an ordinary element,a common part of sand. If you introduceimpurities like arsenic or boron, though,you can turn it into a conductor with theright electrical charge. Selectively placingprecise impurities into a silicon chipproduces an electronic circuit. It's likemaking a magnetically polarized, multi-layered chemical cake. Vary theingredients or elements and you can makeup many kinds of cakes or transistors. Andeach will taste or operate a littledifferently.

As I've just hinted, there are manykinds of transistors, just as there are manydifferent kinds of tubes. I'll describe justone, a particular kind that amplifies, likethe triode tube discussed before. It's thetriode's solid state equivalent: the fieldeffect transistor or FET. The FET we'lllook at goes by an intimidating name,MOSFET for Metal Oxide SemiconductorField Effect Transistor. Whew! That's abig name but it describes what it does: ametal topped device working by aphenomenon called a field effect.

A silicon chip makes up the FET.Three separate wires are welded intodifferent parts. These electrode wiresconduct electricity. The source wire takescurrent in and the drain wire takes currentout. A third wire is wired into the top. Inour example the silicon wafer is positivelycharged. Further, the manufacturer makesthe areas holding the source and drainnegative. These two negative areas arethus surrounded by a positive.



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Now we introduce our weak signalcurrent, say a telephone call that needsamplifying. The circuit is so arranged thatits current is positive. It goes into the gatewhere it pushes against the positive chargeof the silicon chip. That's like two positivemagnets pushing against each other. Ifyou've ever tried to hold two like magnetstogether you know it's hard to do -- there'salways a space between them. Similarly, asignal voltage pushing against the chip'spositive charge gives space to let thecurrent go from the source to the drain. Itpicks up the signal along the way. Checkout this diagram, modified only slightlyfrom Lucent's excellent site.

As Louis Bloomfield puts it:"TheMOSFET goes from being an insulatingdevice when there is no charge on the gateto a conductor when there is charge on thegate! This property allows MOSFETs toamplify signals and control the movementsof electric charge, which is whyMOSFETs are so useful in electronicdevices such as stereos, televisions, andcomputers."

I know that this is a simple explanation toa forbiddingly difficult topic, but I thinkit's enough for a history article. Thanks toAustralia's John Wong for help with hissection. If you'd like to read further, checkout Lucent's transistor page by going here:

http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/heritage/transistor/tech.html

Or for something more involved, go here:

http://landau1.phys.virginia.edu/~lab3e/qsearch.cgi?searchs=transistor&sq=yes

If you have a better explanation orsomething to add, please e-mail me. Andnow back to the narrative.

Resources

Conly, Robert L. "New Miracles of theTelephone Age." The National GeographicMagazine. July, 1954. 87 (back to text)


http://www.lucent.com/minds/heritage/transistor/tech.html


http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/heritage/transistor/tech.html




Page 33


We come tothe 1950s. Dialtone was notuniversal untilthis decade inNorth America,not until directdialing andautomaticswitchingbecame common.While dial tonewas firstintroduced intothe publicswitchedtelephonenetwork in aGerman city by the Siemens company in1908, it took decades before beingaccepted, with the Bell System taking thelead. AT&T used it not only to indicatethat a line was free, but also to make thedialing procedure between their automaticand manual exchanges more familiar totheir customers. People in manualexchanges placed their calls first throughan operator, who listened to the numberthe caller wanted and then connected theparties together. The Bell System thoughtdial tone a good substitute for anoperator's "Number please" and requiredthis service in all of their automaticexchanges. Before the 1950s most of theindependent telephone companies, but notall, also provided dial tone. And, ofcourse, dial tone was not possible onphones such as crank models, in whichyou signaled an operator who then laterconnected your call. [Swihart]

On August, 17, 1951 the firsttranscontinental microwave system beganoperating. [Bell Laboratories Record] One

hundred and seven relay stations spacedabout 30 miles apart formed a link fromNew York to San Francisco. It cost theBell System $40,000,000; a milestone intheir development of radio relay begun in1947 between New York and Boston. In1954 over 400 microwave stations werescattered across the country. A BellSystem "Cornucopia" tower is shown atleft. By 1958 microwave carrier made up13,000,000 miles of telephone circuits orone quarter of the nations long distancelines. 600 conversations or two televisionprograms could be sent at once over theseradio routes.

But what about crossing the seas?Microwave wasn't possible over the oceanand radiotelephony was limited. Years ofdevelopment lead up to 1956 when thefirst transatlantic telephone cable systemstarted carrying calls. It cost 42 milliondollars. Two coaxial cables about 20 milesapart carried 36 two way circuits. Nearlyfifty sophisticated repeaters were spacedfrom ten to forty miles along the way.Each vacuum tube repeater contained5,000 parts and cost almost $100,000. Thefirst day this system took 588 calls, 75%more than the previous ten days averagewith AT&T's transatlantic radio-telephoneservice.

In the early 1950s The Bell Systemdeveloped an improved neoprene jacketedtelephone cord and shortly after that aPVC or plastic cord. [BLR.] Thesereplaced the cotton covered cords usedsince telephony began. The wires insidelaid parallel to each other instead of beingtwisted around. That reduced diameter andmade them more flexible. Both, though,were flat and non-retractable, only beingmade into spring cords later. In the



Page 34

authoritative Dates in American TelephoneTechnology, C.D. Hanscom, then historianfor Bell Laboratories, stated that the BellSystem made the neoprene versionavailable in 1954 and the plastic modelavailable in 1956. These were, the bookindicated, the most significantdevelopments in cord technology since1926, when solderless cord tips came intouse.

On June 7, 1951, AT&T andInternational Telephone and Telegraphsigned a cross-licensing patent agreement.[Myer] This seemingly dry developmentmarked what Myer says "led to completestandardization in the American telephoneindustry." Perhaps. I do know that ITT'sK-500 phones are completelyinterchangeable with W.E. Model 500s, somuch so that parts can be freely mixed andmatched with each other. But whetherAutomatic Electric and othermanufacturers produced interoperableequipment is something I am stillresearching. It is significant, though, thatafter seventy-five years of competition theBell System decided to let othercompanies use its patents. Myer suggests a1949 anti-trust suit against WECO andAT&T was responsible for their newattitude. On August 9, 1951 ITT beganbuying Kellogg stock, eventuallyacquiring the company. In 1952 theKellogg Switchboard and Supply companypassed into history, merging with ITT.Please click here for an excellent time lineon the history of Kellogg.

Thanks to David Mikols for suggesting Kellogresearch and providing the ITT link

In the mid-50s Bell Labs launched theEssex research project. It concentrated ondeveloping computer controlled switching,based upon using the transistor. It borefirst fruit in November, 1963 with the 101ESS, a PBX or office telephone switchthat was partly digital. Despite theircomputer expertise, AT&T agreed in 1956

under government pressure not to expandtheir business beyond telephones andtransmitting information. BellLaboratories and Western Electric wouldnot enter such fields as computers andbusiness machines. In return, the BellSystem was left intact with a reprieve fromanti-monopoly scrutiny for a few years. Itis interesting to speculate whether IBMwould have dominated computing in the1960s if AT&T had competed in thatmarket.

In 1955 Automatic Electric mergedinto General Telephone, retaining its namebut falling under a larger corporateumbrella. General was founded in 1926 asAssociated Telephone Utilities by SigurdOdegard. The company went bankruptduring the Great Depression and in 1934reorganized itself as General Telephone.General had its own manufacturingcompany, Leich Electric, which began in1907. Growth was unspectacular untilDonald C. Power became president in1950. He soon bought other companies,building General into a largetelecommunications company. After themerger of Automatic Electric, Generalacquired answering machine producerElectric Secretary Industries in 1957,carrier equipment maker Lenkurt Electricin 1959, and Sylvania Electronics in thatsame year. In 1959 the newly renamedGeneral Telephone and Electronicsprovided everything the independenttelephone companies might want.Although they were not the exclusivemanufacturer for the independents,Automatic Electric was certainly thelargest. And where GTE aggressively wentafter military contracts, the Bell Systemdid not. In the late 1950s, for example,Lenkurt Electric produced most of thearmed forces' carrier equipment. GTElasted until 1982.

The 1960s began a dizzying age ofprojects, improvements and introductions.In 1961 the Bell System started work on a


http://www.cortelco.com/timeline.htm

http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory3/History3.html

http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory3/History3.html


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classic cold war project, finally completedin 1965. It was the first coast to coastatomic bomb blast resistant cable.Intended to survive where the nationalmicrowave system might fail, the projectburied 2500 reels of coaxial cable in a4,000 mile long trench. 9300 circuits werehelped along by 950 buried concreterepeater stations. Stretched along the 19state route were 11 manned test centers,buried 50 feet below ground, completewith air filtration, living quarters and foodand water. In the same era, the BellSystem in 1964 put its star crossedvideotelephone into limited commercialservice between New York, Washingtonand Chicago. Despite decades ofdreaming, development and desire by Bellscientists, technicians and marketingwonks, the videotelephone never found amarket. But some long lived successesmarked the age as well.

1968. Even the astute Japanese fell victim todeveloping picturephones, this model was

probably developed by Nippon Telephone andTelegraph; the ultimate picturephone site is

here:http://www.bellsystem.com/tribute/video_phon

e.htm

In 1963 digital carrier techniques wereintroduced. Previous multiplexingschemes used analog transmission,carrying different channels separated byfrequency, much like those used by cabletelevision. T1 or Transmission One, bycomparison, reduced analog voice traffic

to a series of electrical plots, binarycoordinates to represent sound. T1 quicklybecame the backbone of long distance tollservice and then the primary handler oflocal transmission between central offices.The T1 system handles calls throughoutthe telephone system to this day. In 1965the first commercial communicationssatellite was launched, providing 240 twoway telephone circuits. Also in 1965 the1A1 payphone was introduced by BellLabs and Western Electric after sevenyears of development. Replacing thestandard three slot payphone design, the1A1 single slot model was the first majorchange in coin phones since the 1920s.

In addition, 1965 marked the debut ofthe No. 1ESS, the Bell Systems firstcentral office computerized switch. Theproduct of at least 10 years of planning,4,000 man years of research anddevelopment, as well as $500 milliondollars in costs, the first ElectronicSwitching System was installed inSuccasunna, N.J. Built by WesternElectric the 1ESS used 160,000 diodes,55,000 transistors and 226,000 resistors.These and other components weremounted on thousands of circuit boards.Not a true digital switch, the 1ESS didfeature Stored Program Control, a fancyBell System name for memory, enablingall sorts of new features like speed dialingand call forwarding. Without memory aswitch could not perform these functions;previous switches such as crossbar andstep by step worked in real time, with eachstep executed as it happened. The switchproved a success but there were someproblems for Bell Labs engineers,particularly when a No.1ESS becameoverloaded. In those circumstances ittended to fail all at once, rather thanbreaking down bit by bit.

In June 1968 the FCC allowed nonBell equipment to be legally attached toBell System lines. Despite restrictions theBell System would impose on such


http://www1.shore.net/~mfoster/L4

http://www.bellsystem.com/tribute/video_phone.htm


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equipment, many companies startedproducing products to compete withWestern Electric. In 1969 MicrowaveCommunications International begantransmitting business calls over their ownprivate network between Saint Louis andChicago. Bypassing Bell System lines,MCI offered cheaper prices. AT&Tbitterly opposed this specialized commoncarrier service, protesting that BellSystem's long distance rates were highersince they subsidized local phone servicearound the country. Still, MCI was a minorthreat, economically. The real problemstarted a few years later when MCI tried toconnect to the Bell System network.

At the end of the 1960s AT&T beganexperiencing severe customer serviceproblems, especially in New York City.The reasons were many but most had to dowith unforeseen demand, coupled withreduced maintenance. The Bell Systemfixed the problems but not without anattitude that embittered people by themillions. In Boettinger's pro-Bell Systemhistory, he recounts the troubles this way:"In 1969, unprecedented jumps in usageand demand caused service deteriorationin several large cities. Huge and rapidinjections of equipment and personneltrained in accelerated programs wererequired before quality levels wererestored. The experience showed how vitaltelephones had become to modern life(when even persons on welfare were felt toneed a phone) and how frustrations with

breakdown led to aggressive behavior."That the Bell System didn't understandhow vital telephones were to modern lifeis beyond understanding; that welfarerecipients weren't thought to deserve aphone is beyond acceptance, however, MaBell was not alone in dealing withdissatisfied customers. GTE also hadproblems.

GTE and Automatic Electric wentthrough tremendous growth in the 1960s,with A.E. expanding to four differentfacilities. In 1969 their California facilityin San Carlos made transmissionequipment. Switchgear and relatedequipment came from Northlake andGenoa, Illinois, and telephones and othercustomer apparatus came from Huntsville,Alabama. Automatic Electric Limited inCanada also produced equipment. A.E.'sresearch in the 1960s resulted in their firstcomputerized switch being cut into serviceinto Saint Petersburg, Florida inSeptember 1972. It was called the No. 1EAX (Electronic Automatic Exchange).Growth wasn't handled well, though, bytheir parent company, General Telephoneand Electronics.

GTE was then a poorly managedconglomerate of 23 regional phonecompanies and a maker of, among otherthings, televisions and light bulbs. Theyhad their successes and failures. Onenotable achievement is below.



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"Introducing a crimestopper so advanced Dick Tracy doesn't have it yet."

In1971 General Telephone andElectronics (GTE Sylvania) introduced adata system called Digicom. It letdispatchers identifying patrol car locationson a screen, and allowed officers to runlicense plate checks. When a patrolmantouched a spot on the digicom screen it litup the same spot on the dispatcher's map.Produced by their Sociosystems ProductsOrganization, I do not know how manyunits were actually installed by GTE, but itcertainly foreshadowed laterdevelopments. Today many policedepartments use cellular digital packetdata (CDPD) to run plates andcommunicate in text with theirdispatchers. CDPD runs on existingcellular networks, with data rates no morethat 9.6 or 19.2 Kbs, adequate for mostpurposes but slow when you consider thatin the year 2000, 29 years after this systemwas introduced, we are still laboring withcreeping data rates. Click on the imageabove or here to get the full picture and

story. (It's a huge graphic file so becareful: 364K)

GTE had their problems as well,especially with customer service, gettingworse and worse through the late sixties,with the company admitting theirproblems by conducting a highly unusualnational magazine ad campaign inNovember, 1971. The ad in the NationalGeographic read:

"A lot of people have been shooting atthe telephone companies these days.And, in truth, we've had our hands fullkeeping up with the zooming demandfor increased phone service. ButGeneral Telephone and, in allfairness, the other phone companieshaven't been sitting around countingdimes. For some time now, we'vebeen paying a healthy 'phone bill'ourselves trying to make our servicedo everything you expect of it . . .During the next five years we'll bespending over $6 billion upgrading


http://www.privateline.com/Clipart/gte.jpeg

http://www.privateline.com/Clipart/gte.jpeg


Page 38

and expanding every phase of ourphone operation . . . Ladies andgentlemen, we're working as fast asbrains, manpower and money cancombine to make our service asefficient as possible."

And although GTE might not have "sataround counting dimes," GTE's poorservice record continued, a reputation thathaunts it to this day. Rightly or wrongly,the phone companies, particularly those inthe Bell System, watched agog ascustomer relations got worse. Hacking andtoll fraud increased dramatically, as thephone company became fair game, asoulless and uncaring monster to waragainst. Attacking Ma Bell becamecommon and almost fashionable.

1972 Mad Magazine cartoon. The captionreads: "Stockholders Grow FAT As Telephone

Users Go Mad As Rates Rise And ServiceFlops."

For a short discussion on wireless toll fraud gohere

In 1974 the Justice Department beganinvestigating AT&T again for violatingantitrust laws. They recommendedWestern Electric and Long Lines bedivested from AT&T. Many people inJustice as well as throughout the countrywere concerned with the size of AT&Tand their monopoly status. Althougheveryone knew the Bell System providedthe best telephone service in the world, it

had done so with little or no competition.AT&T's assets stood at 75 billion dollars.Big was not good in the early 1970s, withanti-establishment feeling running highduring the Vietnam and Watergate era.Contributing to the Bell System's woes, inJuly, 1977 the FCC instituted acertification program, whereby anytelephone equipment meeting standardscould be connected to Bell System's lines.Dozens and then hundreds ofmanufacturers started competing withWestern Electric, making everything fromanswering machines, modems, faxmachines, speakerphones, to differentlystyled telephones.

During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s,Stromberg-Carlson of Rochester, NewYork and then Lake Mary, Florida,produced a marvelously simple switchknown as the X-Y. While an independentphone maker at the turn of the century,Stromberg-Carlson had by the early 70sbeen acquired by General Dynamics. Theywere later bought by Rolm and then bySiemens of Germany, who still owns ittoday. It's new name is Siemens-Stromberg. But back to their switch.

Little known outside the industry, theStromberg-Carlson X-Y step by stepswitch solidly competed for businessagainst Strowger technology(manufactured by Automatic Electric andothers) in thousands of installationsthroughout rural America. Some mayremain in Mexico and South America.Although the Bell System and manyindependents preferred the Strowgerdesign for small communities, manytelephone companies did not. Strowgerequipment often worked reliably fordecades but it was more complicated thanX-Ys and it required a great deal ofpreventative maintenance performed byskilled craft workers. Ray Strackbein, whoused to work for Stromberg-Carlson, saysthat X-Ys, by comparison, needed fewrepairs and fixes were simple. He writes,


http://www.privateline.com/PCS/history.htm#anchor1107186

http://www.siemens.de/en2/flash/bookmark.html?http://www.siemens.de/en2/flash/welcome4.html


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"I once met a husband-and-wife team thattraveled throughout the Great Plains intheir Winnebago motor home on a yearlycycle and routined hundreds of X-Yoffices each year. They would workArizona, New Mexico, and Texas in thewinter, and Montana, Wyoming, andNorth Dakota in the summer. Even aSwitchman who could not figure out howto wire a doorbell for a central office couldmaintain a C.O. full of X-Y switches."

Ray then goes on to describe theStromberg-Carlson X-Y step by stepswitch, which could be configured orenlarged in blocks of 100 lines:

"Describing it is rough, but it was amodular switch that was horizontallyslid into a vertical bay of shelves. Anarray of 400 (10X10X4) bare copperwires ran vertically behind the switchfor the whole length of the bay. Fourcircuits were needed to make aconnection: Tip, Ring, Sleeve, andHelper Sleeve.

Each switch sat on shelf about12"X9"X2" (2" high). When someonedialed a number, the retracted switchmoved horizontally -- the X direction --(left-to-right as you faced it from thefront), one step for each dial-pulse.Then when the dialed digit stoppedpulsing, the switch rapidly extendedhorizontally away from you as youfaced it, with four contacts, one foreach circuit -- T, R, S, and HS --sampling the 10 possible phone trunksfor an idle trunk to the next selector.

The design of the X-Y switch wasbrilliant. Unlike the Strowger that liftedthe armature for each dial pulse thenrotating through a half-circle to find anidle line, the X-Y switch lifted noweight. The moving switch rested onthe plate and moved only horizontally.This made for a switch of a muchmore simple design than theStrowger." [Strackbein]

Visit the well done, detailed Crown PointTelephone Corporation's company history

page

ANDPlease visit Ray Strackbien's site

Stromberg-Carlson introduced theirfirst digital switch around 1978, theStromberg Carlson System Century digitalswitch. As switches were going digital, so,too, were nearly all electronics in thetelecommunication field. Still, a fewtechnological holdouts remained, as theBell System replaced their last cordswitchboard in 1978, on Santa CatalinaIsland near the coast of Los Angeles,California. That's right, operators stillplacing calls by hand in the Age of Disco."[T]he smallest version of Western's 160toll switchboard" was replaced by a 3ESS,the first Bell switch, incidentally, to beshipped by barge. The city served wouldhave been Avalon. This according to theJune, 1978 Bell Laboratories Record andpersonal correspondence with P. Egly ofSanta Rosa, California.

Egly relates the following aboutAvalon:

"Tom, Avalon had its own inwardoperator and I even remember theroute, 213 + 012 +... Calls off theisland were handled by the sameoperator using She surely dialed all


http://cptelco.net/tab2.htm

http://www.connectionexperts.com/


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calls in the same way that any of theoperators in the LA toll centers did. Iam not sure if the trunks to themainland were by microwave or bycable. ""[Since this was a manual exchange]There were no dial phones on Avalon,all were manual magneto service witheven the payphones having cranks.Most of the private subscribers had300 or 500 type sets with dial blanksconnected to magneto boxes. Theoperator rang the subscriber from herboard using her ring key to supplyringing current from a standard WECOring generator."

He goes on to say that the Bell Systemhad a like system in Nevada:

"There was a similar situation inVirginia City, Nevada with thesubscribers having the old walnut andoak magneto phones with localbattery. In this case, most subscribersresisted the cutover to dial service,since the magneto phones were quiteelegant. . . all polished wood andgleaming brass bells. They were partof the period atmosphere of the town."

This simple switching technologycame within six years of outliving themost advanced telephone company onearth. But one manual toll board remainedin the public switched telephone networkeven longer.

[Myers] Myer, Ralph O, 1995, Old TimeTelephones!: Technology, Restoration andRepair, Tab Books, New York. 123Excellent. (back to text)

[Swihart, Stanley] Telecom History: TheJournal of the Telephone History Institute,Issue 2, Spring 1995 [back to text]

[Strackbein] Personal correspondence withTom Farley, July 16, 2000. Anothercomment from Ray: "I didn't know thatStrowger was from Penfield. That maypartially explain why Stromberg-Carlsonlocated in Rochester. As an aside, there is

a building in Rochester called "CarlsonPark" (as in industrial park). The parkinglot looks just like it did in the mid '70'swhen I last saw it (I was teaching a classfor Xerox in Webster last year andmentioned that I used to work forStromberg and someone in the class saidthat the old plant was still there -- which itis -- so I drove over for a peek. The onlydifference is that they have sub-dividedthe administrative offices into privateoffice suites and businesses.) Except forthe new business signs, everything looksexactly as I remember it from 25 yearsago."[back to text]

[ETH] Events in TelecommunicationHistory, 1992 ,AT&T ArchivesPublication (8.92-2M), p53 (back to text)

[Bell Laboratories Record] "Coast toCoast Radio Relay System Opens." BellLaboratories Record, May, 1951. 427(back to text)

[Bell Laboratories Record] Weber, C.A.,Jacketed Cords for Telephones, BellLaboratories Record, May, 1959 187 (backto text)



Page 41


Michael Hathaway reports that "[My]parents owned the Bryant Pond TelephoneCompany in Bryant Pond, Maine, the lasthand-crank magneto company to go dial. Itwas in our living room and the last callwas made October 11, 1983." Hand crankmagneto switchboards evolved around theturn of the century. Their arrangement wasnot common battery, where the exchangeor central office powers their equipmentand supplies electricity to customer'sphones. Rather, as we saw earlier in thisseries, a crank at the switchboardoperator's position was turned to signal acustomer. Turn the crank and you caused adial at a customer's telephone to ring, amagneto in the crank generating thepower. To place a call a customer signaledthe operator with a similar crank on theirsubscriber's. A big battery in the base ofthe customer's telephone supplied thetalking power. Here's an example of amagneto switchboard below, a 1914Western Electric Type 1200, known as a"Bull's Eye." This board is at the RosevilleTelephone Company Museum and it still

works for demonstrations. Click here or onthe image below to see the large version.

So, you had many people on non-dial,candlestick or box telephones, as nearly ahundred years before. My father,incidentally, worked a magneto-poweredswitchboard in his youth, near Davidson,Michigan. Mike goes on to say that,

"My father and mother Elden &Barbara Hathaway sold the BryantPond Telephone Company in 1981but it took two years to convert. Theydid have about 400 customers(probably 200 lines - two switchboardsfull). When they bought the companythere were only 100 customers. TheOxford County Telephone Company,which bought it, retained ownership ofthe last operating switchboards, andthey are currently deciding what theywould like to do with them. Theoptions include giving them to thetown of Bryant Pond, and I have heardthere is interest from the Smithsonian.My mother, who is 83, thinks that'squite exciting.

A lot of the family memorabilia hasbeen donated to the Fryeburg Fair(Maine) Farm Museum, whichalthough is only open during the 8 day


http://www.oxfordtelecom.com/local/bryantpond/

http://www.oxfordtelecom.com/local/bryantpond/

http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory5/magnetoswitchboard.JPG


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fair, is visited by many thousandseach year. It is hoped to have within ayear or so a working magnetoswitchboard there where someonecan call from an old pay phone toanywhere. My mother has a lot oftelephone parts left over which we areslowly marketing for her asmemorabilia from the last old hand-crank magneto company. I've actuallywritten a book about the Bryant PondTelephone Company called'Everything Happened Around TheSwitchboard.' It's (obviously) a story offamily life around the switchboard andis light reading with hopefully humorand nostalgia. I have lots of copies leftand sell it directly. The address isMike Hathaway, PO Box 705,Conway, NH 03818. But it is alsoavailable from Phonecoinc.com,http://www.bibliofind.com, and severalbookstores."

This site has a great list of ending dates intelephonic history:http://www.sigtel.com/tel_hist_lasts.html

To sum up, although some manualswitchboards may have remained in thePSTN, those being small office switches,or PBXs, the Bryant Pond board remainsthe last central office manual exchange inAmerica. On this happy and nostalgic noteof technology passing away, so at thesame time was the world's greatesttelephone company coming to an end.

Although they had pioneered much oftelecom, many people though theinformation age was growing faster thanthe Bell System could keep up. Manythought AT&T now stood in the way ofdevelopment, rather than being theharbinger of it. And the thought of anylarge monopoly struck most as inherentlywrong.

In 1982 the Bell System had grown toan unbelievable 155 billion dollars inassets, with over one million employees.By comparison, Microsoft in 1998 hadassets of around 10 billion dollars. OnAugust 24, 1982, after seven years of

wrangling, the Bell System was split apart,succumbing to government pressure fromwithout and a carefully thought up planfrom within. Essentially, the Bell Systemdivested itself.

Judge Harold Greene entered adecision called the Modified FinalJudgment, since it impacted the 1956decision limiting AT&T to the telephonebusiness. In the MFJ as it is known,AT&T kept their long distance service,Western Electric, Bell Labs, the newlyformed AT&T Technologies and AT&TConsumer Products. AT&T got their mostprofitable companies, in other words, andspun off the regional Bell OperatingCompanies or RBOCs. Completedivestiture took place on January 1, 1984.The operating Companies thenconsolidated into the seven large entitiesshown below.

New Regional BellOperating Company Old Bell Company

Ameritech Illinois BellIndiana BellMichigan BellOhio BellWisconsin Bell

Bell Atlantic Bell of PennsylvaniaC&P CompaniesNew Jersey Bell

Bell South South Central BellSouthern Bell

NYNEX New York TelephoneNew England Telephone

Pacific Telesis Nevada BellPacific Telephone

Southwestern Bell Southwestern Bell

US West Mountain BellNorthwestern BellPacific Northwest Bell


http://www.phonecoinc.com/category.asp?rpage=search&category=Books#01007

http://www.bibliofind.com

http://www.sigtel.com/tel_hist_lasts.html


Page 43

In perhaps the most cumbersome partof the Modified Final Judgment, JudgeGreene split the country into 160 localaccess and transport areas, looselystructured around area code boundaries.Essentially, local phone companiescouldn't provide long distance service andlong distance companies couldn't providelocal service. Judge Greene thought theBaby Bells would dominate long distanceservice in their territories if allowed toprovide it. He insisted that only a longdistance company could pass LD trafficfrom one LATA to another. By now thisprohibition has ceased on a federal level,however, many states have yet to allowcomplete local and long-distancecompetition. And although AT&T onceagain provides local service for a fewselect markets, local service remains amonopoly for most areas, just as TheodoreVail would have preferred.

Epilogue -- the death of Western Electric

"On January 1, 1984, the WesternElectric Company, then older than thetelephone itself, ceased to exist(Hochheiser 1991, 143). On that dayof court ordered divestiture, the BellSystem was broken into sevenregional operating companies (theBaby Bells) and a more compactAT&T. AT&T retained the long-distance part of the business, itsvenerable research organization (BellLaboratories), and its manufacturingoperations (which could no longerhave exclusive supply arrangementswith the operating companies). Anewly created AT&T Technologies,Inc. assumed the corporate charter ofWestern Electric and continuedmaking 500-type, 2500-type, andTrimline telephones under the AT&TTechnologies label for several yearsat plants in Indianapolis andShreveport. However, to becomecompetitive in the market, AT&Tshifted residential telephonemanufacturing to the Far East,beginning in Hong Kong in late 1985,Singapore the following year, and laterin Bangkok and elsewhere. Thusended U.S. production of rugged

electromechanical telephones, andthough phones similar to the 500-type,the 2500-type, the Princess, and theTrimline are still made to-day, they areproducts of the modern electronicsage, rather than a bygone culture."

From: Old Time Telephones:Technology,Restoration and Repair by Ralph O Myer,Published by TAB Books, a division ofMcGraw Hill, Inc., Blue Ridge Summit,PA 17294 1 -800-822-8158 (717)-794-2191 (717)-794-2103 FAX ISBN No. 0-07-041817-9 (Paperback) 1995Recommend highly to anyone who repairsor wants to understand old telephones.

Miscellaneous History

Why is there no "Q" or "Z" on manytelephones?

This fascinating story comes fromhttp://www.LearningKingdom.com: Somevoice mail systems don't take into accountthat not every phone has a Q or Z . . .

The telephone's pad of twelve buttonsreflects its history. There are three letterson most buttons, except for zero, one,octothorp (#) and the star symbol (*),which have no letters. "Q" and "Z" areusually missing from the list. Why?

Instead of twelve buttons, telephonesused to have circular plates with ten holesnumbered from zero to nine. To makephone numbers easier to remember, thephone companies assigned letters to thenumbers, so people could remembermnemonics like "Charleston" for C-Hinstead of the first two digits of a number.Of the ten digits, zero was already used todial the operator and one was used forinternal phone company signals. That lefteight numbers to which letters could beassigned. Three letters per number tookcare of 24 of the alphabet's 26 letters, andthe least common letters "Q" and "Z" wereleft out, but not forever. Many telephones


http://www.LearningKingdom.com


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now show "Q" on the seven button, and"Z" on the nine button.

Resources

The following lists many resources Iconsulted:

The Telecom Digest is an excellent placeto start searching. A great archive and lotsof good links:

http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives

Try also the Antique Telephone CollectorsAssociation:

http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/atca.html

Also, search Yahoo by topic. Search for'Telephone History' . Here you go:

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=telephone+history

If you get really stumped, go over toDejanews.com to easily search thenewsgroup or USENET postings.Someone will probably be able to help ifyou post your question:

http://search.dejanews.com/

Hardcopy or Print Bibliography:

Many of these books are out of print,however, several new resources are onlineto make finding old copies easier. Myfavorite, so far, is the Advanced BookExchange at http://www.abebooks.com/

Boettinger, 1976, The Telephone Book,Riverwood Publishing, Croton on Hudson,New York

NB: This book was updated in 1983 byStearn Publishers (formerly Riverwood) toinclude a chapter about divestiture.

(Thanks to Dorothy Stearn of StearnPublishers Ltd. for pointing this out.)

Brooks, John, 1975, Telephone: The FirstHundred Years, Harper and Row, NewYork

Bruce, Robert R, 1973, Alexander GrahamBell and the Conquest of Solitude, Boston1973 37, 121

Conly, Robert L, July, 1954, NewMiracles of the Telephone Age, TheNational Geographic Magazine

Cox, Wesley, 1985, Kiss Ma Bell Good-bye: How to Install Your Own Phones,Telephones, Extensions & Accessories --and Save Lots of Money, Crown, NewYork

Fagen, MD, ed., 1975, A History ofEngineering and Science in the BellSystem. Volume 1 The Early Years, 1875 -1925. New York: Bell TelephoneLaboratories

Hyde, J Edward, 1976, The Phone Book:what The Telephone company wouldrather you not know, Henry RegenryCompany, Chicago

Morgan, Jane, 1967, Electronics In TheWest: The First Fifty Years, NationalPress Books, Palo Alto, p63. Gooddiscussion about De Forest

[Myers] Myer, Ralph O, 1995, Old TimeTelephones!: Technology, Restoration andRepair, Tab Books, New York. 123Excellent. (back to text)

Pecar, Joseph A, Roger J. O'Conner,David A. Garbin, 1993, The McGraw HillTelecommunications Factbook, McGrawHill, New York

Rhodes, Beginning of Telephony 45, 13-14Bell develops the idea for the telephone.


http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives

http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/atca.html

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=telephone+history

http://search.dejanews.com/

http://www.abebooks.com/

http://www.abebooks.com/


Page 45

Steinberg, William F, and Walter B. Ford,1957, Electricity and Electronics -Basic,American Technical Society, Chicago

Swihart, Stanley, Independents Show BellThe Way to Big-City Dial Service,Telecom History Issue 2 Spring 1995, p94

Thomas Watson, Exploring Life, 1926,New York

"GTE Corporation" Britannica Online.<http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/249/7.html>[Accessed 11 February 1999].


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