1939: Telephone

The mild but general pickup in business which occurred in 1939 was paralleled by an increased demand for telephone service. The Bell System had a net gain of 776,000 telephones and the independent connecting companies added between 90,000 and 100,000 instruments. Increased use of the telephones in service also occurred, the number of local calls made daily during the twelve months being 88,810,000 as compared to 84,330,000 in 1938, while toll calls increased from 2,870,000 to 2,990,000.

Coincidentally, the quality of telephone service has in various respects continued to rise. The explanation lies in large part in the successful application of scientific principles to the design of new and improved forms of telephone equipment and to improved operating methods.

The telephone has, for the past few years, bridged all terrestrial distances, so that length of circuit is no longer an index of progress. Therefore, the following are mentioned as typical of improvements occurring within recent years. The initial cost of a three-minute New York-San Francisco call was $20.60 — now it is $6.50 during the day and $4.25 for nights and Sundays. Ten years ago it took, on an average, 3.2 days from the time an order for a new telephone was received to have it installed; today the average time is 1.4 days, the work being carried out upon an appointment basis at a time suiting the subscriber's convenience. Also, ten years ago, a telephone subscriber had some trouble with his telephone or his line on an average of about once in a year and a half; today he has trouble only once in more than two years. Ten years ago the average time required to make a toll or long distance connection was 2.8 minutes, and this represented a reduction during the preceding five years from 7.9 minutes; today, the average time is 1.4 minutes — and today about 93 per cent of the long distance calls are handled without the person who is calling hanging up his telephone.

The improvement in transmission on a call from New York to San Francisco as compared with twenty years ago, is roughly equivalent to the difference between conversing in an open field at a distance of several hundred feet, and conversing within the same room.

An improvement in equipment for local service appears in the so-called 'crossbar' switching mechanism, which is now going into central offices for the dial telephone. The first crossbar office was opened in New York City about two years ago and since then some twenty crossbar offices have been opened or are nearing completion.

Important advances have also taken place in the field of long distance telephony. Recent developments relate particularly to more extensive multiplexing, to the end that a single pair of wires will carry an increased number of simultaneous messages. There is now available a so-called broad band system which transmits twelve messages simultaneously and which is applicable both to open wire and cable pairs. While the largest number of messages which a single pair of wires is called upon to transmit is sixteen, a new type of cable, termed 'coaxial,' is now undergoing commercial trial — the capacity of its two conductors being several hundred messages. It has been successfully tested for as many as 480 messages at a time. Coaxial cable will also offer a means of interconnecting television broadcasting stations in a manner similar to that in which broadcasting stations are now connected by high quality telephone lines.

It should be recorded that 1940 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the first transcontinental telephone line. Prior to 1914, the longest circuit in use connected New York and Denver, and it was of rather indifferent quality. The advent of various forms of amplifying devices just prior to 1915 made the transcontinental undertaking a success. After a brief period of trial the three-element vacuum tube was chosen as the standard type of telephone amplifier or repeater, and its use has multiplied enormously in the intervening quarter-century. The American telephone plant has over 100,000 repeaters in service. It may be said, therefore, that the achievement of transcontinental telephony marked the opening of a new, auspicious chapter in telephone history.

One interesting extension of service has been available in New York City and Chicago during the past year and has proved so popular that its adoption in other large centers is under way. This consists of a weather reporting machine upon which official forecasts are recorded and modified at appropriate periods throughout the day to the end that any subscriber, by calling a number such as WEather 6-1212 in New York, is connected with the machine, which then automatically recites to him the forecast which has been placed upon it. The number of calls to WEather 6-1212 in New York City averages between 15,000 and 20,000 per day and constitutes a service of increasing popularity among hotels, restaurant proprietors, commission houses and other lines of business whose day-to-day trade is intimately associated with the weather.