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Here is yet another report on the
work done by Bell Telephone Laboratory to advance the science of telecommunications.
By 1945 when this appeared in Radio News magazine, Bell Labs had already
been experimenting with coaxial cable as a means of transmission for broadband voice,
facsimile, and video signals. In fact, it claims coax was used as early as 1927
to connect New York City to Washington, D.C., and that a new loopback system simulating
a 3,800-mile run was being tested between New York City and Philadelphia. Microwave
relay stations* were also in their infancy at the time, so investigations into both
modes of long distance transmission were being explored. It is too bad the company
got overzealous and abused the customers who funded their success, resulting in
a court-ordered
breakup of the monopoly in 1974. Of course company managers and lawyers quickly
figured out a way to restructure the "Baby Bells" in a manner which, taken in totality,
had about the same (or more) control over the industry than before the breakup.
* See Bell Telephone Laboratories links at bottom of page.
Bell Labs - 90-Mile Laboratory for Telephone and Television
 Between telephone offices in New York and
Philadelphia once stretched a strange sort of laboratory. Most of the way it was
underground; engineers made their measurements sometimes in manholes. It was a lead-sheathed
cable containing two "coaxials" - each of them a wire supported in the center of
a flexible copper tube the size of a lead pencil.
Theory had convinced engineers of Bell Laboratories that a coaxial could carry
many more telephone talks than a full-sized voice frequency telephone cable; that
it could carry adequately a television program. Experimental lengths were tested;
terminal apparatus was designed and tried out. Finally, a full-sized trial was made
with a system designed for 480 conversations. It was successful; in one demonstration
people talked over a 3800-mile circuit looped back and forth. Now the cable is carrying
some of the wartime flood of telephone calls between these two big cities.
This cable made television history also: through it in 1940 were brought spot
news pictures of a political convention in Philadelphia to be broadcast from New
York. Bell System contributions to television, which began with transmission from
Washington to New York in 1927, have been laid aside for war work. When peace returns,
a notable expansion of coaxial circuits is planned for both telephone and television
in our Bell System work.
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Exploring and inventing, devising and perfecting for our Armed Forces at war
and for continued improvements and economies in telephone service.
Posted July 27, 2021
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