The Bell Svsteiii Techiiieal Journal 



Volume XXXI July 1952 Number 4 



COPYRIGHT 1952, A.MLOIUCAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY 



Thirtieth Anniversary 



Thirty ycar.s ago this month The Bell System Technical Journal 

 began pubhcation. Suggested l\y Dr. George A. Campbell, it had been 

 luider disciLssion for some years. Dr. K. W. King, ^vho had been one 

 of its most active ad\'oc'ates, became its editor when the staff of the 

 Journal was established. Except for a six-year period following 1928, 

 while he was in England, Dr. King continued as editor until he retired 

 m 1949. 



By July, 1922, when Xo. 1, ^'ol. 1 of the Journal appeared, research 

 and development was a long established practice in the Bell System. 

 The high-vacuum electronic tube, which had already begun to revolu- 

 tionize electrical communication, was itself a product of Bell System 

 research. Since electrical communication was a still comparatively new 

 field of study, however, its publications were widely scattered. There 

 seemed a need for a magazine that would serve the communication 

 engineers exclusively, and it was largely to meet this need that The Bell 

 Sy'Stem Technical Journal was launched. 



In the thirty years since that time, the art and science of communica- 

 tion has advanced and ramified beyond anything likely to have been 

 then foreseen. A very substantial part of this increase has originated 

 within the Bell System, and this progress has been reflected in the pages 

 of the Technical Journal. There seems little reason to doul)t that 

 the next three decades will witness an ad\'ance at least comparable 

 with that of the past three, and it is planned to ha\'e the Journal pre- 

 sent the work of the coming years, with perhaps even greater effective- 

 ness than in the past. Abstracts or titles of all Bell System technical and 

 scientific j^apers appearing in other publications are listed in the Journal 

 and reprints of many of these papers are available and may be obtained 

 In' subscribers. In one way or another, therefore. Journal readers have 

 access to essentially all the technical papers published by the Bell 

 System. With this increased coverage, it is hoped that the Journal 

 will proxe increasing!}^ useful to a growing circle of readers. 



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