For a long stretch of the 20th century, Bell Labs is the most innovative scientific organization in the world. Its most notable invention is the transistor , invented in , which is the building block of all digital products.
The phone travels over miles of land and 6, miles of ocean and is occasionally interrupted by static. Men were quickly replaced and did not return until the early s when federal law required equal opportunity. Direct long-distance dialing service , without the aid of an operator, becomes available. The first transatlantic telephone cable conversations are distinct and even, in contrast to the fading often experienced on radio telephones.
In the case of the Bell System, this government control went back more than 70 years, and it set the company up for serious trouble when changes came in the late s. To Vail, this was wrong and inefficient, and he apparently did not believe that market forces would solve this problem. This was a very real concern, and in view of the fact that other major countries ended up with government-owned telephone systems which often performed badly, we owe Vail a great debt for keeping the U.
But Vail was no friend of the free market or of competition. A distinguished business philosopher, he produced a number of essays and speeches which show that he clearly favored using the power of government to help him reach the goals he sought for the telephone industry. This seemed a reasonable idea in a time when the public was indignant about the profits of huge corporations and trusts.
It also seemed reasonable to accept government regulation. It is also unrealistic to believe, as Vail apparently did, that any government body can be free from corporate or political pressures.
What he idealized, of course, was a statesmanlike group that would make profoundly wise decisions in the public interest and without the aim of benefiting or penalizing any part of society. As we know, however, all regulatory bodies are subject to pressures of various kinds, to say nothing of the convictions and prejudices held by individual members.
For one thing, persons on lifetime appointments always know that their status, if necessary, can be changed by public vote, and they are also vulnerable to other public sanctions. Bell System officials usually won cooperation from federal and state officials and were left free to manage the telephone business in most important ways.
They carried out their mission of service with great skill, and they also took care not to flaunt their monopoly position. The telephone operator was always pleasant and helpful, the service truck always arrived promptly, and Bell people would go to any lengths to get systems working again when there was storm damage.
Moreover, the system moved ahead on the technical front, and we came to expect frequent improvements: rotary dialing that eliminated need for calling the operator, direct dialing of long distance, WATS service, and better telephones. With service like that, why would anybody want a different kind of telephone system?
But trouble was never far away from the Bell System. A plus-S12 billion-a- year business in , Western Electric had long been under attack.
Indeed, it was to force the divestiture of Western Electric that prompted the U. To others, it was simply another manufacturer that was able to maintain a government-sponsored monopoly position because the 22 Bell operating companies were captive to it and had to buy most of their equipment from Western Electric.
This was a festering issue with companies that had the expertise and technology to compete with Western Electric, but were denied entry to the market. More serious trouble came for the Bell System as a result of its rate-making and costs policies. One result was to subsidize lower residential rates by raising the cost of long distance service and business services—an action that set off a continuing controversy in the ensuing years. It also shows, more than almost anything, how far the Bell System had been able to stray from the usual constraints that face business organizations in the market place.
No business with competitors can deliberately reduce its prices to one group of customers while making up the difference by overcharging other groups. His book Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe raised public consciousness to the attention-manipulation strategies used by invasive data gathering business models in top technology companies today and has contributed to scrutiny of the practices by regulators and individuals. Currently under protection from liability by Section of Communication Decency Act, certain companies have thrived to wield significant and potentially monopolistic influence over public communication.
They have also, whether by design or not, created self-reinforcing echo chambers of opinion which may be dividing us further from each other. Bell System was known for providing the highest-quality telephone parts in the United States, but that ended in The telephone components were then manufactured by foreign companies for Western Electric , a leading telephone company.
Watson, come here, I want to see you," he could already envision a great national telephone system. As he wrote to his father that evening, "I feel that I have at last found the solution of a great problem, and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas is, and friends will converse with each other without leaving homes.
On February 27, , the first business venture had begun before the invention with an agreement among Thomas Sanders, Gardiner G.
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