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Shopping for the System “Dial M for Maintenance.” Shopping for the System “Dial M for Maintenance.” Matthew Hockenberry New York University @hockendougal “Shopping for the System,” Western Electric Advertisement, 1947. SHOPPING FOR THE SYSTEM M. Hockenberry Maintenance is not only the work of repairing and THE SUPPLY DEPARTMENT refurbishing faults in technological systems, it is In the first decade of the twentieth century, the work of organizing the materials that are maintaining the materials required for the function necessary to sustain them. It is the work, one of the telephone network had become something might say, of supply. No where has this been of a concern, even within the seemingly ordered more true than in the history of telephony, where operation of the Bell System. Nineteenth century the "invention" of the telephone transformed the sourcing had been a largely haphazard affair, Western Electric Company from one of the most without the precise specifications needed to meet formidable producers of electrical and the requirements of manufacture and maintain the telecommunication equipment to an entity driven complex geographies modern operations required almost entirely by the demands of maintaining the for their persistence. By 1920, even the minimum very system it had brought into being. As one of requirement for maintaining the telephone totaled the largest networks ever created, the telephone tens of millions pounds of copper, tin, and lead; demanded not only the production of the sets tens of thousands tons of galvanized iron and supplied to its subscribers, but the maintenance of steel wire, pole line hard-ware, and paper for the apparatus, switchboards, and lines these directories; and tens of millions feet of lumber and subscribers now depended on. It required a clay conduits.1 Monopoly leverage, Albert Salt, diverse array of human agents, and an equally Western Electric's general purchasing agent, extensive supply of nonhuman ones. To furnish explained in 1914, as "the country's largest them, Western Electric had come to manage one electrical jobber”, had helped to extend Western’s of the most expansive purchasing operations in material demands into the farthest reaches of the the world. Shopping for the system, its stewards supply chain.2 Specifications "prepared by the explained, was no simple task. engineering department" were "usually accepted Under the 1882 arrangement that brought it as standard,” and in some commodities the into the Bell System, Western Electric had not company had now become the single largest only become the sole manufacturer of the purchaser and distributor in the world.3 telephone, it had begun a transition to the This hadn’t always been the case. Before the principal purchasing agent and "one source of turn of the century the regional telephone supply for the Telephone Company.” As a result, companies had operated their own purchasing purchasing became not only an interest of the and supply departments. The only thing the firm, it was the mandate for maintenance as the "average telephonic man knew [then] about very foundation of its system. It was not "mere supplies," E. J. Speh, superintendent of supplies buying," the company proudly explained, but a in Philadelphia, wrote in 1912, "was that he "vast and fascinating task," one that took on an usually did not have the articles he needed when increasingly scientific character borne from "keen he wanted them." After joining the System, all of judgement, extensive research, and scientific the switchboards, telephone sets, "and a great planning." The work of "backing up the deal of the wire, cross-arms, and supplies of that telephone,” required rubber from Singapore, mica kind" could be bought from Western Electric, and from India, and conduit from Ohio. If its surest Speh estimated that by 1900 sixty-five percent of sign was to be a “market basket,” with everything all the material was provided this way. "It from “pencils and pins to telephone poles and appeared logical," he offered, that Western was in locomotives,” it was not one that would be come "the best position to undertake the purchasing for to easily. all associated companies.” Under this new arrangement Western would manufacture and sell To consider this transition, this paper offers some all the materials that were requested, repair or historical background for a presentation at reissue equipment when it was needed, and Maintainers II: Labor, Technology, and Social "establish warehouses in locations suitable for a Orders, April 6-9, 2017. !2 proper distribution of supplies." In short, "it To the unhappy impression left by "liberal undertook all of the functions of a Supply and sprinklings" of the "Black Order'" mark on delivery Purchasing Department."4 tickets, Henry offered that "it may be interesting to As Speh saw it, the regional telephone know that the Supply Agent's office is not companies had been akin to "a chain of retail established for the purpose of holding on to stores whose customers are the lineman, supplies, or to block orders for any material installers, and other workmen who use material to authorized for use."7 build and maintain the telephone plant." As a As he wrote to the regional services, supply result, they had found themselves with many of houses, distribution centers, repair shops, and the same problems that retail operations like sales agents of the System, Henry struggled to "Woolworth five and ten cent stores" might have. illustrate the function of the forms necessary for The daily practice of making local inventories and Western's circulation of supply.8 His need to do so estimates, formulating overstock reports, is suggestive of just how quickly Western Electric overseeing minor repairs, and preparing had become associated with the promise of requisitions had become a critical point of failure provision. In some sense, the entirety of in maintaining the larger system of supply. telephony had collapsed under the formal Sometimes the regional operations were carefully designation of the order requisition, a singular organized, but often not. One of the storerooms mechanism of procurement for Speh's "one Speh encountered in 1910, for example, had a source of supply."9 "Now with the material on "prize catch-all” which contained these supplies, hand, or scheduled, how are we to get it?" Henry valued at $17.44: asked. The answer, it seemed, was always the same. "Whether the material desired is cable or Receiver headband, directory, ringer and terminal boxes, pencils or printed forms, desks or gong, generator, junk wire. worn-out dry chairs, soaps or mops—'Make a requisition for batteries, new No. 87 cords, new No. 96 it.'"10 cords, induction coil, mouthpieces, No. 156 cords attached to No. 110 plugs. No. 12-A THE REQUISITION protectors, glass insulators, copper sleeves, The work done by the requisition served to test connector, bolts, bit, solder, leather strip, abstract out decades of work done by purchasing fiber tube, assortment of screws. From the agents through the turn of century. They not only perspective of the telephone companies it was worked to regulate and routinize the actions necessary to perform their duties only to the inscribed on them, they mediated Western's extent that they could "assure a regular interactions by directing particular presentations replenishment of stocks by frequent order of its corporate role. To H. H. Henry and his upon the Western Electric Company at readers, it was not Western Electric the frequent intervals.”5 manufacturer, but Western Electric the "storekeeper," the distributor, the collection of The expansion of Western’s operation wasn’t as accountants and acquisitions men, who would easy as Speh seemed to suggest. As then- carefully scour reports and records to build up president of Western Electric (and future stocks and estimates. It was Western Electric the president of AT&T) H. B. Thayer explained it in supplier, with the Western Electric News writing of 1913, Western had at first been so reliable that how its traffic department did the work of "routing there was a great deal of uncertainty when it now shipments from the hundreds of points of supply failed to function.6 To concerns over unmet to distributing houses and customers," moving demands, unexpected delays, or unclear "nearly a million tons of freight each year" across accounting, supply men like the Chicago’s H. H. tens of thousands of shipments (by 1917 it was Henry could only affirm the incredible scale and "one billion, eight hundred million odd pounds"). If nearly insurmountable challenges undertaken in the heart of the company had been found at its the work of provisioning. Despite the well-ordered factory in Hawthorne, its nerves were now carried appearance wrought for the standard requisition, by the countless supply and distributing houses the logistical demands inscribed on their (nearly thirty) responsible for running investments redemption as "W. E. Material," were substantial. in stocks and managing deliveries.11 !3 These requisitions were connective, adhesive, forms. They not only brought together disparate divisions, they forged the distant links of a global supply chain, holding together the business of buying and the materials of supply until their ultimate installation by telephone technician at the site of subscription. The Western Electric office became a sprawling assembly of diverse sites: the stock maintenance desk that must secure the material summaries serving as estimates of requirements, authorize stocks, and supervise changing of printed forms; the service desk that charted telegraphic and written inquiries for orders before filing claims on discrepancies; a credit desk where inspectors saw returned goods passed in exchange for credit; the billing desk "One Order Covers Them All!" 1924. term stamping orders cross-referenced against and telegraph wires that supported them. Rarely the bound copies of the company's purchase would a requisition be plain and unadorned, agreements.12 absent the idiosyncratic instructions of their authors.
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