50 



Naiional Resources Planning Board 



the American Telephone ami Telegraph Company. The men 

 who were to investigate the problems which loaded lines pre- 

 sented to repeaters were in Dr. Jewett's department in the 

 telephone company; those who were to make a laboratory 

 attack on the repeater itself were grouped into a research depart- 

 ment under Dr. E. H. Colpitts in the Engineering Depart- 

 ment of the Western Electric Company. The scientists thus 

 assembled became the nucleus of the present Research Depart- 

 ment of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. A year later Jewett 

 became Assistant Chief Engineer of the Western Electric Com- 

 pany, and in that position coordinated the entire transcontinental 

 line research, whether carried out in the laboratory or in the 

 field.'" 



The work was directed primarily to the development 

 of electrical amplifying devices, to improvements in 

 line structure, and to the proper association of line and 

 amplifiers at periodic intervals to give stable operation. 

 Although several forms of repeaters were tried out 

 successfully on the line, it was demonstrated that the 

 vacuum tube could be perfected to be the most effec- 

 tive telephone amplifying device. As a result of the 

 work, on Januar}^ 25, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell 

 in New York talked with Thomas A. Watson in San 

 Francisco over 3,400 miles of wire. 



Since that time have come in succession improved 

 repeater operation over open wire lines, repeated 

 cable systems adequate to span any distance, multi- 

 plexing of both open wire and cable circuits, and the 

 multichanneled coaxial circuit type of cable now going 

 into use. The development of transoceanic radio tele- 

 phone service to Europe and later to all parts of the 

 world has been the final step in extending the distance 

 range of telephone communication. 



Since the laboratory had become so important and 

 its work so extensive by 1925, it was given corporate 

 form and became knowTi as the Bell Telephone Labora- 

 tories, Inc. Dr. Jewett was made president of this 

 unit and a vice president of the American Telephone 

 and Telegraph Company, which owns the Laboratories 

 jointly with the Western Electric Company. The 

 Laboratories are responsible to the former company 

 primarilj' for fundamental research and development, 

 and to the latter for development, design, and engineer- 

 ing in connection with manufacture. 



The principal activities of the Bell Laboratories are 

 carried out in a headquarters building in New York 

 City, together with leased space in two other city 

 buildings. However, many kinds of development are 

 carried out in smaller country locations. These 

 include radio laboratories at Holmdel, Deal, and Wliip- 

 panj', N. J., a chemical laboratory at Summit, N. J., 

 an outside plant laborator}' at Chester, N. J., and a 

 transmission testing station at PhoenLxville, Pa. 

 Stations are also located at Gulfport, Miss., and 

 Limon, Colo., to insure a range of climatic conditions 



■"The line and the laboratory, p. 10. Seo footnote 101. 



for testing of preservatives for timber products. In 

 addition, small groups of people from the laboratories 

 are located at the Western Electric factories at Kearny, 

 N. J., Hawthorne, 111., and Point Breeze, Md., and at 

 a large number of places tliroughout the country, to 

 carry on work with the people and plant of the oper- 

 ating telephone companies. 



About 2,000 out of a total of 4,600 people in the Bell 

 Telephone Laboratories are professionally trained 

 members of its technical staff. This trained personnel 

 covers development and engineering as well as research. 

 Somewhere between a fifth and over a half of the per- 

 sonnel would be designated as "research" according to 

 the interpretation of that somewhat indefinite term. 



Since research, development, manufacture, and opera- 

 tion are all included in the Bell System organization, 

 the divei-sity of problems covered by the Bell Telephone 

 Laboratories is peculiarly wide. Much of the Labora- 

 tories' work finds embodiment as operating systems of 

 apparatus — transmission systems for handling telephone 

 currents and switching systems for establishing tele- 

 phone connections. The work of such a system starts 

 with fundamental mvestigations of materials and of 

 electrical and mechanical action, together with studies 

 of the needs and experiences of the operating companies. 

 The work continues through the model stage of appara- 

 tus and functioning combinations, and then into the 

 economical design of all the parts involved and their 

 association iiito an economical operatuig system. 

 Included are considerations of manufacturing methods, 

 factory testing, and field installation and operation. 

 The development responsibility for the new system 

 covers also its trial uistallation and tests of performance 

 in the operating plant. The Laboratories' interest in 

 the system extends throughout its useful life and may 

 finally end with a consideration of the best way of 

 obtaining any residual value as it goes to the junk pUe. 



The following statement, by one intimatel}' connected 

 witli the Laboratories for manj^ years, gives another 

 picture of the diversity of the Laboratories' activities: 



Our research problems are scattered along the whole frontier of 

 the sciences which contribute to our interests, and extend through 

 the fields of physical and organic chemistry, of metallurgy, 

 magnetism, electrical conduction, radiation, electronics, acoustics, 

 phonetics, optics, mathematics, and even of physiology, psychol- 

 ogy, and meteorology. In each field inquiry carries the important 

 question of its practical applications, and thus involves con- 

 sideration of the specific devices which our industry uses and 

 study of new forms into which they may be molded and new 

 services which they may be made to render.'" 



Western Union Telegraph Company 



For many years after the demonstration of the practi- 

 cability of Morse's electric telegraph, research and 

 development in the field of electrical communication 



1" Arnold, H. D. Organizing our research. BeU Laboratorlu Record, I. 161 (June 

 1926). 



