In our previous articler we had started to count the history of Bell Laboratories, the organization from which many of the technological innovations of the XNUMXth century emerged. Among them Unix, the operating system that would inspire Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds.
We leave this story with Theodore Vail, president of AT&T and your project of creating a universal telephone service. (Understanding as such the universe of telephone users in the United States)
The great obstacle to be overcome in achieving universal service was distance. The technology at the time only allowed human voice to be transmitted for a 1700-mile journey before the signal was distorted or lost intensity.
If you wanted to establish a transcontinental phone service between New York and San Francisco, AT&T not only had to solve the problem of signal strength and distortion. It was necessary to develop a cable that could run through mountains and deserts and withstand climatic difficulties.
The company executives decided to do something new for the time, ask scientists for help. The firm recruited some PhD students in Physics from the University of Chicago for its lab in New York.
One of them would manage to solve the problem.
The birth of Bell laboratories
In 1921 Congress excluded telephone services from antitrust laws allowing Vail's concentration plans to take place. In 1924 the firm merged all its engineering departments and created an independent company called Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
Laboratories research and develop new equipment for Western Electric (the subsidiary responsible for the production of telephone equipment), and carry out switching and transmission planning and invent communications-related devices for AT&T. These organizations would fund the work of Bell Labs.
Of the two thousand specialists hired, the vast majority worked in product development. About three hundred, however, were engaged in basic and applied research. The latter included the fields of the physical and organic chemistry, metallurgy, magnetism, electrical conduction, radiation, electronics, acoustics, phonetics, optics, mathematics, mechanics, and even physiology , of psychology and meteorology. Nor was it ruled out anything remotely related to human communications, whether through cables or radio or recorded sound or visual images.
As I said in the previous article, my intention is not only to detail the events that led to the development of UNIX, but also I want to talk about the culture that generated those innovations. A culture that would later give good results in the creation of the Internet and the free software movement. Therefore, we are going to stop to describe the work environment a bit.
Work inside the laboratories was carried out in large, open rooms with wooden floors and divided by stone pillars that supported the weight of the ceiling. In total, it occupied an area of more than one hundred and twenty-one thousand square meters. This is not including the roof that was used to test how various paints, coatings and metals withstood the elements.
While some rooms in the building were dedicated to the design of new devices, the building also included test laboratories. for telephones, cables, switches, cords, coils and many other types of components. There was chemical laboratories to examine the properties of new materials that could be used to produce alloys for wire and cable sheathing, while in orafter parts of the building the effects of electric currents and switching combinations were tested and new circuit patterns were being investigated. The development of wireless transmission was also taken into account.
Bringing scientists and engineers together
Bell Labs were among the first to integrate basic science with engineering. It is interesting how the coexistence occurred.
According to the chroniclers, there was no real distinction between the role of engineers and scientists. All were united by the goal of achieving the small improvements necessary to improve the telephone service and manage to take it to the whole country.
This did not mean that basic research was neglected.. Those in charge of the laboratory wanted some of the young scientists they had hired to ignore everyday problems and they will focus on learning how fundamental laws and new discoveries in physics and chemistry could affect future communications. Members of this group could choose what to investigate.
In the next article we are going to talk about the first contribution of Bell Labs to the computer industry.
Good article, in my opinion AT&T had no idea or vision of how communications, computing and later the Internet would grow.
Something understandable more than a project was an idea, but if things were changed possibly AT&T would be an IBM.