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April 1948 Radio News
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early
electronics. See articles from
Radio & Television News, published 1919-1959. All copyrights hereby
acknowledged.
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Life is a constant battle on all
fronts, be it in health, personal relationships, business, medicine, careers, education,
technology, or any other realm. Scientists, engineers, and technicians at the former
Bell Telephone Laboratories are affected by that maxim as well as any group of people.
The company, known to many as Bell Labs, invested a huge amount of
funds and personnel effort into fighting the problems which constantly cropped
up both during research and development and while servicing their massive
installed base of equipment and transmission lines. Bell Labs regularly ran full-page ads in magazines (including
technical and others like Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Woman's Day, etc.) informing
the paying public of the extents they went to in order to bring new products to
market and to keep existing systems providing excellent quality communications (the
best in the world). This example for a 1948 issue of Radio News magazine
tells of the unexpected chemistry issues solved by their crack teams of employees.
Bell Telephone Laboratories Ad
 The Battle of the Atoms
Telephone equipment is constantly at war against invisible forces of nature which
seek to take it apart, atom by atom. On all fronts, Bell Laboratories chemists must
fight corrosion - an enemy able to make a telephone circuit noisy or perhaps to
sever it altogether.
An example: for years lead cable had lain protected in wooden ducts. Then in
certain areas something began to eat the sheath, exposing wires to moisture. Corrosion
chemists of the Laboratories were called in. The corrosion, they found, came from
acetic acid generated in the wood during the preservative treatment then in use.
They pumped in neutralizing ammonia. Corrosion stopped. Now telephone duct wood
is controlled for acidity.
In a large city, smoke-polluted air was coating the silver surfaces of contacts
with sulphide. Noisy circuits resulted. Chemists discovered minute traces of sulphur
vapor in the air. They filtered incoming air with activated charcoal. Today, the
latest telephone contacts are of palladium - not affected by sulphur.
Corrosion in metals is only one type of deterioration which engages Bell chemists
against hostile forces. Plastics, paper, metals, rubber, textiles, coils, waxes
and woods all have enemies. But knowledge, and persistence, are steadily winning
out - to the benefit of the telephone user.
A Bell Laboratories corrosion engineer examining samples during an exposure test
on corrosion-resistant finishes and alloys.
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Exploring and Inventing, Devising and Perfecting for Continued Improvements and
Economies in Telephone Service
Posted July 1, 2022
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