frontiers of science a series of information films presented as a public service documenting the latest developments in medicine and science in the space age the future can be found in many places it can be seen reflected in the eyes of those who are privileged to look at it here at this bell telephone exhibit it can be found in the shape and form and made from the metal and the wire the time and the effort of those who are privileged to create it now i like to show you what our recent development the transistor may do for future telephone service first i'm going to throw this switch and turn back the clock to the days before you could talk on the telephone over distances of say several hundred miles now i want you all to listen in while i talk on this telephone well i don't think any of you could really understand what i was saying but let's throw another switch and start coming back to the present now you can hear me clearly over a line that represents the same distances that's because we know you as repeater units containing sound amplifying vacuum tubes that give your a voice of boost as it goes across country tomorrow will still be here as well as previously but look how small this repeater unit is it's smaller easier to make amplifier but made possible by developing the transistor the tiny piece of sound amplifying equipment that requires no warmup time and has an almost indefinite lifespan our research people are hard at work finding out what else it may be able to do where else we may be able to put it to use this is a business that has always dealt in the future that's the way alexander graham bell thought of it when the business was started back in one thousand eight hundred and seventy six i was in some haste to invent the telephone but it has urgent work to do talks things and makes your laugh and quite an honored work in my view of the future the novelty will wear off the instrument will blind it will grow light convenient and familiar to every hand a common tool within the means of every factory business every home and connected to a central switching office which can connect any two subscribers in a matter of seconds and then i see its lines and poles matching thousands of miles connecting the head office of every city in the land to the head office of every other city and then i see perhaps in the next century the tiniest farthest hamlet woven into the wild fabric telephone people must always be looking ahead it was that way in one thousand nine hundred and twenty two when you might've heard this kind of conversation by some engineers who had the job of looking into the future say charlie got a minute sure what's on your mind take a look at this chart what do you make of it well if we keep on adding customers as we have in the past and if our customers continue to place more and more calls with a manual equipment we have in now you won't be able to give the kind of service our customers expect from us i'll make you a little bet that never happens oh what's the answer you know that's the question telephone people have been asking themselves for years now and the finding the answer and a type of telephone service that switched calls automatically it took the time and energy of many telephone people who made use of what was already known about dial switching systems in developing the new equipment and new techniques which would make this better faster automatic service a reality but the people they served the future had been met before it ever arrived today if most telephones are a dial there were problems sure dial is a pretty complicated affair ask some of the old timers they'll tell you glad to i can still remember how we sweated it out together drawing seconds for a dialect changed that could be produced not only on a sheet of tracing clause but on an assembly line as well as a production supervisor i know from experience it's tough enough to make a change on a production line that's already in business let alone starting from scratch to set up a new one for something we'd never made before out in the field we installation people have always had the problem of installing the new stuff and cutting it into the line without interfering with any one service our customers like to feel they can use their telephone any time and making that possible has always been part of our job there was the problem of finding a new spot for the operators who handle the manual switchboards that preceded dial what happened to the operators there are thousands more today than there were before dial more improvements in telephone service the more calls to handle more calls mean more jobs to do and more people to fill those jobs we've always felt that in the long run the best equipment we could provide produce the best results not only for the people we're in business to serve but for those who helped to make that service possible as well people like frank dubrovnik cable inspector mary jane holmes service representative eleanor o'brien operator luke benson field representative each of whom in his own friendly fashion made that service a reality on an ever increasing basis if you have any doubts on that score ask those of us pick up our mail at rfd boxes since the end of the war well over a million of us have had telephones installed the vast spaces of america that represent a living for the farmer present a tremendous problem for anyone with the responsibility of providing telephone service in those places if to take a lot of construction work a lot of telephone poles to bring in a telephone to someone in a rural area we're still using polls today since the end of the war we put up about two million of them the difference being we now use wire that requirement one pole for support whereas three were needed before how come ask the men from our research and manufacturing organizations how come they're the ones who follow the job from an induction furnace where they test and it was poured through the prescribed heat treatment through the making of the test prior the end time became a red hot snake goes slithering steel racing through a western electric wire mill and eventually turned into the extra spanked telephone line that crosses dave baker's pasture new wires speeding power driven augers that earn a lot of the earth a place to set a telephone pole sharp tongue wire plows that bite into the ground as if they really enjoyed it and lays special rubber covered wire as well as a new way of using power lines as telephone pathways have stretched the long arm of friendly telephone service to many a friendly farmhouse door besides serving as a path for telephone wire and acting as a highway for the newest pans continental airplanes that fly so high they cannot be seen only heard the air above the earth serves as a highway for something else that can be heard but not seen the only visible sign in these conversations is the radio relay tower they come from through whose lens as microwave radio beams carrying not only the telephone messages you speak but the radio programs you hear the television shows you see to the next tower on a hilltop twenty five miles away which receives the signal and sends it to the next hilltop tower and so on until its destination is reached another communications highway of the present and the future is to be found in coaxial cable the basic coaxial cable can handle one thousand eight hundred telephone conversations at one time and that's a lot of telephone service not to forget television programs tele typewriter news services and radio programs coaxial cable like this has already crisscrossed the country pushed past some of our last frontiers guided by a 20th century type of pioneer who swapped his covered wagon and team of oxen for a diesel power and cable plow and left in his wake not a wagon trail but a network of electronic highways another frontier and the everlasting campaign to improve service is to be found in the town of media pennsylvania not far from philadelphia it's monday morning in media and mrs douglas of the hill crest avenue douglas's can hardly wait telephone philadelphia to order a real bargain she spotted in her sunday paper there she goes it's an out of town call but she dials the number directly without having to reach an operator one of the most important problems that had to be solved to furnish this service was finding a way of automatically keeping track of how long mrs douglas has conversations lasted the telephone number she called and telephone number so she could be correctly billed this array of impressive looking equipment and the central office went into action to do just that it's not enough for the equipment to remember it's got to make a record as well here at this recorder the billing information from mrs douglas call and others from media is punched out in code on a reel tape at an accounting center in philadelphia the information is processed by machines which have had such brains and skill that they can translate the coded perforations into a record efficient does this equipment is it's put an early step in the development of an automatic message accounting system in the laboratory is the man who developed new equipment and the men who will have to build it are always at work not only in proving what has been developed but creating new things as well like the latest crossbar switching system whose automatic switching of telephone calls has made possible operator toll dialing however it's one thing for highly skilled scientists technicians to do the power equipment in the laboratory and quite another to mass produce it on a production line what goes into it where do we get it how much does it cost what are the conditions under which it must be handled what tools will be required for it's assembly what production procedures will be followed what skills will be required by people employed of this operation what training will they need in addition to their previous experience is adequate test equipment available what rate of production is indicated by the specifications in this case as in all cases the combination of western electric working with the bell laboratories on crossbar switching equipment from the very beginning made it possible for those questions to be answered before they were ever asked and paved the way for operator toll dialing a new technique and telephone service that makes it possible for operators to dial long distance calls directly without going through other operators along the way or are at a distant place that's quite an improvement in long distance service when you consider that in one thousand nine hundred and twenty seven if you wanted to make a long distance call you picked up your telephone and then something like this took place number please may i have long distance one moment please this is long distance i want to call chicago the number is war based twenty ninety eight thank you we will call you when ready with chicago the long distance operator passed the call on to a line operator who found an available line to chicago and over it reached an operator at the incoming switchboard for chicago long distance calls chicago wall badge twenty ninety eight the chicago operator put the call through to the wall badge central office wall badge twenty ninety eight and finally the operator was able to ring your party time required about five minutes on the average and in one thousand nine hundred and twenty seven that was good long distance service today in many places with many more on the way you give your long distance operator the number and she called into action the crossbar dial switching system which sets in motion the corresponding equipment in chicago and the next thing you know wall badge to two twenty ninety eight is ringing time required about one minute we've come a long ways since one thousand nine hundred and twenty seven because we wanted to come a long way what's made it tough has been the complicated equipment necessary to give telephone service when we develop something new it's a physical impossibility and financially impractical to rip out everything we have in service one day and replace it with all new equipment the next besides who has to tell this man that his call is not so important but that it can wait or this girl the country's telephone service can't be turned off while the telephone company changes over to new models wherever you go in the villa system from the operators at the other end of your line who take pride in the part they play in furnishing your telephone service to the construction people who see to it that tomorrow is telephone lines are put in today you will find telephone people building for the future the future of the telephone business is bright and rich with promise for the millions of telephone users like yourselves who was quick acceptance and ready use of each improvement and telephone service has helped make possible an endless chain of accomplishments what will it be this time an operator dial call to cleveland or the ballet on channel two by means of coaxial cable an important call by mobile telephone service to a transcontinental truck on us one to a ship putting out to sea or to a train racing across country it has been the faith of the american people who have invested their savings in the bell system and the present as well as the desire of telephone men and women everywhere to keep on furnishing more and better telephone service in the future that makes this story a story without end