Magazine for the Science & Technology Innovation Center in Middletown, NJ • Premier Edition Honoring the Past, Creating the Future Innovation is in ourDNA Letter from Our Contents page 12 our Editor Features 2 The History of AT&T 94 Data Transmssion — Fax Welcome to our Science & Technology Innovation Center of Middletown, New Jersey magazine premier edition. The new Innovation Center is a place 12 The Transistor 100 Cellular Phones of inspiration and learning from the history of AT&T and significant inventions that our company has created over the past 142+ years that contribute to 13 Bell Solar Cell 104 Project AirGig™ the advancement of humanity. Over my years at AT&T, I have spoken to many The Telstar Project Our Contributors people who never knew that AT&T had a history of innovation in so many 16 109 areas beyond the creation of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. Coax Cable 24 Throughout the years, AT&T has been a key player in local and long-distance 30 Fiber Optics in the AT&T Network voice telephony, motion pictures, computers, the cable industry, wireless, and Science & Technology broadband. AT&T has served the nation’s telecommunication needs and par- 34 Vitaphone and Western Electric ticipated in many technology partnerships in every industry throughout the globe. The breadth of technology and innovation goes on and on, but a 44 Picturephone Irwin Gerszberg few of the innovations you might see at our new Innovation Center include: Innovation ground-to-air radio telephony, motion picture sound, the Telstar satellite, Theseus Honoring the Past, Creating the Future AVP Advanced Technology Research 48 telephone switching, the facsimile machine, military radar systems, the AT&T Science & Technology transistor, undersea cable, fiber communications, Picturephone via T1’s, coin 50 A Short History of UNIX™ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Innovation Center phones, touch-tone dialing, AMPS cellular phones, UNIX™ and C language Irwin Gerszberg programming. 55 Museum and Map [email protected] MANAGING EDITORS Pam Bogdan, Don Barnickel As a forward-thinking technology company, AT&T is continually re-inventing 58 Transmission Evolution itself. Innovation has been alive in our corporate DNA for the past 142+ years. ARCHIVISTS Sheldon Hochheiser, Melissa Wasson, While this magazine is a tribute to the great people that give us such a rich 64 Millimeter Waveguide William Coughlin history and future, it is my hope to inspire every person visiting the Innova- Undersea Transmission tion Center and reading this magazine to become a part of AT&T’s legacy of 68 ART DIRECTOR innovation. With the opening of our new Center, it will be the first time people John MacNeill 76 The Evolution of Switching will see many of the artifacts on permanent display to inspire the current and PHOTOGRAPHER all future generations of AT&T employees. 86 Telephone Booth Michael Mills ILLUSTRATOR Finally, I would like to thank our leadership and the many individuals who 90 Sharing the Conversation Jacqueline Bogdan made the Center and this magazine possible: our partners in this project, Hank Kafka, Scott Mair, Marachel Knight, Sihem Ben Saad, Middletown I2I; the AT&T Archivists — Sheldon Hochheiser, Bill Caughlin and Melissa Wasson; from Corporate Real Estate Jeff Onori and Chuck Ott; for help with Cen- ter media Barbara Laing and Dave Mahar; and the many volunteer authors, editors and other contributors who shared their spare time to produce the articles in this magazine. page 104 AT&TAT&T SCIENCE SCIENCE & & TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION | 1 The History A Company Grounded in Innovation of AT&T By Sheldon Hochheiser Welcome to this exploration of Morse code, but what he called an applied for and received a second AT&T’s long history of innovation. “undulating current,” a continuous patent for a practical telephone. AT&T was founded with an innova- electrical wave analogous in form tion — Alexander Graham Bell’s in- to the sound wave. By June 1875, he Bell, however, was not interested vention of the telephone in 1876, and had proven his idea by transmitting in business, so he left the commer- we have been innovating ever since speech sounds (but not intelligible cialization of his invention and the in the interests of using technology speech) down an electrical wire. This company founded to exploit it, the — telecommunications — to bring led Bell to file a patent application first Bell Telephone Company, in the people together. on February 14, 1876. The patent, hands of his chief financial backer #174765, was issued on March 7. and now father-in-law Gardiner The Birth of the Hubbard. Bell and his wife left for Telephone England on a long honeymoon. He Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scot- “Mr. Watson, come was 31, and never had to work for a land in 1847. By the early 1870s, he here; I want you!” living again. was living in Boston and working as a teacher of the deaf, a profes- The Telephone in the sion he learned from his father. Like Three days later on March 10, using 19th Century many young men with a technical a newly designed instrument, the Hubbard raised the capital to com- bent, he turned to the cutting-edge liquid transmitter, Bell succeeded mercialize the telephone primarily technology of the day, the electri- in transmitting the first intelligible by what we would call franchising — cal telegraph, as an area where he speech ever sent via electricity: “Mr. he licensed people in various cities could make his fortune by invention. Watson, come here; I want you!” to operate telephone businesses Along with a few others, he thought Thomas Watson, Bell’s assistant, under Bell’s patents. The first such of making the telegraph transmit heard it down the hall on his reed franchisee, George Coy of New speech rather than Morse code, receiver. Watson wrote this and Haven, CT, invented the telephone but unlike the others he combined several subsequent sentences down switchboard, and with it opened the his newly acquired knowledge of in his notebook, which is one of the world’s first telephone exchange in electricity with an understanding of treasures of the AT&T Archives and New Haven on January 28, 1878. The Alexander Graham Bell (1876) speech and hearing. In the summer History Center. It is so fragile that telephone caught on; by 1881 there Photo courtesy AT&T Archives and History Center of 1874, he had a key intellectual a replica is on display at the AT&T were telephone exchanges licensed breakthrough—what was needed Science and Technology Innova- in almost every place in the United was not the digital on-and-off of tion Center. The following year, Bell States with over 10,000 residents. By 2 | AT&T SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AT&T SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION | 3 Theodore Vail (1915) then the parent company had been American Bell and became the par- can Bell, and later as the founding Photo courtesy AT&T Archives and History Center reorganized as the American Bell ent company of what soon began president of AT&T when it was the Telephone Company, and Hubbard to be referred to collectively as the long-distance subsidiary. Vail was a and the other initial owners had lost Bell System. Over the years, AT&T visionary, a firm believer in systems control of the business to a group acquired a controlling interest, and and networks. He fought the inde- of wealthy Bostonians. American then complete ownership of most of pendents by many means, including coils, placed according to a theory Bell and its franchisees continued its licensees, which it combined into the nation’s first public image adver- developed independently in 1899 to grow. In 1882, American Bell a smaller number of companies. tising campaign. He used the slogan by George Campbell at AT&T and acquired a majority interest in the “One Policy, One System, Universal Michael Pupin at Columbia Universi- Western Electric Company, a leading This followed the 1894 expiration Service” to convince the American ty reduced attenuation, permitting manufacturer of electrical equip- of Bell’s second patent at which people and government that the circuits of up to around 2,000 miles, ment. It became the sole supplier of time it became legal for others to United States would best be served such as one AT&T opened between telephone equipment to American open telephone exchanges. Within by having a single national telephone New York and Denver in 1911. What Bell and its licensees. Engineers a decade, over 6,000 independent system under AT&T control. He was needed was a way to amplify employed by Western Electric, such telephone companies had gone argued that the telephone, by the the signal. So, Carty hired a bright as Charles Scribner, made numerous into business across the United nature of its technology, was a nat- young physicist, Dr. Harold Arnold, in inventions to improve the telephone States, but while Bell’s market share ural monopoly where competition 1910 to work in the Western Electric system from multiple switchboards dropped from 100 percent to 50 was inherently inefficient. Govern- Engineering Department on an elec- to underground cables. percent, its number of subscribers ment regulation was the appropriate trical amplifier. In late 1912, indepen- increased by 700 percent as the tele- alternative. dent inventor Lee de Forest brought And after the success of an 1884 phone became democratized. his invention, the audion, the first long-distance line connecting New He succeeded, but with limits, when three-element vacuum tube to York and Boston, American Bell Theodore Vail—One AT&T Vice President Nathan Kings- AT&T. It would do a small amount of formed a subsidiary in 1885, the New Policy, One System, bury negotiated an agreement with amplification but would break down, York-based American Telephone Universal Service the U.S.