A pictoral overview of the history of AT&T and the Bell System
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Image courtesy of Daryl Gibson
An unprecedented commitment to safety and quality became a halmark of the Bell System.
The Bell Telephone Company was founded in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. Over the next decade, the Bell Telephone Company (later known as American Bell) aquired a controlling interest in the Western Electric company and incorporated under the name American Telephone and Telegraph. AT&T became the parent company and handled long distance communications, Bell Telephone handled local distribution and switching, and Western Electric manufactured all equipement used in the Bell System from microwave radio systems to copper wire.
On October 18, 1892, Alexander Graham Bell made the inagural phone call opening long distance service from New York to Chicago. The cost to make a call was $9 for the first five minutes.
In 1941, AT&T introduced the Class L broadband coaxial carrier system. The system was called "broadband" due to the fact that it was capable of transmitting a broad band of frequencies (up to 57MHz for L5). This meant that the Class L system could carry large numbers of communications channels. The first system, L1 was capable of carrying 600 channels, an enormous number for the time. The picture on the left shows the cross section of an L4 coaxial cable capable of carrying up to 32,400 channels. The picture on the right shows an L4 cable cross section next to an L3 cable. The class L system has been gradually replaced by fiber optic starting in the mid 1980's.
Image courtesy of Daryl Gibson
In 1947, AT&T Long Lines unveiled their TD-2 microwave relay system. Due to the fact that it operated in the microwave spectrum (2-12GHz), it could efficiently carry large numbers of high fidelity signals such as television or voice channels (up to 19,200 for later systems) and made possible low-cost cross country long distance telephone service. TD2 radio was far more flexible than coaxial systems and could easily skirt terrain that would have been nearly impossible to lay coax through. By the late 70's, TD2 systems carried up to 95% of all television signals and 70% of all long distance telephone calls (the remainder carried by coaxial and open wire systems).
In 1962 the first transatlantic television broadcast was relayed by Telstar, the first active communications satelite. Bell Labratories was resposible for many of the advancements that made Telstar possible including the solar cells that powered it, the guidance systems of the launch vehicle, and the giant tracking antenna (right).
Front and back of a postcard from the 1964 New York World's Fair showing the AT&T building. The AT&T exhibit was enormous for a single business and reflects the financial position of AT&T in the mid-sixties. The 1964 World's Fair was the venue that AT&T chose to introduce their latest advancement in telecommunications technology: the picture phone.
In 1965 AT&T introduced the 1ESS (Electronic Switching System). The digital ESS system replaced the earlier Crossbar series of electro-mechanical switches. ESS used triode vacuum tubes (precursor to the transistor) as its primary logic element as opposed to the electromagnetic relays used by Crossbar. 1ESS (also known as the Autovon system) was used for military and government communications. The first civilian ESS system was 4ESS (first installed in Chicago in 1975) and capable of switching over 350,000 calls per hour.
Effective on January 1, 1984, the Bell Sytem was broken up under Anti-Trust laws. The monopoly that had brought the world modern communications was gone. AT&T proper remained AT&T and introduced the familar "death star" logo. AT&T attempted to remain in the long-distance carrier business but quickly met competition from fiber optic networks owned by companies such as Sprint and MCI. With datacom emerging as the new frontier in telecommunications, AT&T introduced AT&T Broadband and began building its own fiber optic network. But the practice of providing only the finest service regardless of cost or time caught up to AT&T in the brave new world of speed and economy. AT&T was recently aquired by SBC in a $16 billion merger that is poised to become the next premier telecom network conglomerate.
The Bell companies faired slightly better than AT&T with the regional state divisions having become individual companies (the "Baby Bells"). Many still exist as large and healthy companies such as Bell Atlantic (Verizon), BellSouth, SBC (Southwestern Bell Corp, Pacific Bell, Ameritech (composed mostly of Midwestern Bell companies), and others), and Qwest (Northwestern Bell, other state Bell companies, and Qwest proper). Ironicly, SBC, a Bell conglomeration, is the company that will now own AT&T.
Western Electric became AT&T Network Systems in the late 80's and is currently known as Lucent Technologies. Bell Labs, the only non-Bell company allowed to use the name, still exists as a growing research and development company.