History of telecommunication

A replica of one of Claude Chappe's semaphore towers (optical telegraph) in Nalbach, Germany

The history of telecommunication began with the use of smoke signals and drums in Africa, the Americas and parts of Asia. In the 1790s the first fixed semaphore systems emerged in Europe; however it was not until the 1830s that electrical telecommunication systems started to appear. This article details the history of telecommunication and the individuals who helped make telecommunication systems what they are today. The history of telecommunication is an important part of the larger history of communication.

Early telecommunications

Main articles: Beacon and Optical telegraphy

Early telecommunications included smoke signals and drums. Drums were used by natives in Africa, New Guinea and South America, and smoke signals in North America and China. Contrary to what one might think, these systems were often used to do more than merely announce the presence of a camp.[1][2]

In 1792, a French engineer, Claude Chappe built the first visual telegraphy (or semaphore) system between Lille and Paris. This was followed by a line from Strasbourg to Paris. In 1794, a Swedish engineer, Abraham Edelcrantz built a quite different system from Stockholm to Drottningholm. As opposed to Chappe's system which involved pulleys rotating beams of wood, Edelcrantz's system relied only upon shutters and was therefore faster.[3] However semaphore as a communication system suffered from the need for skilled operators and expensive towers often

at intervals of only ten to thirty kilometres (six to nineteen miles). As a result, the last commercial line was abandoned in 1880.[4]

[edit] Telegraph and telephone

Main articles: Electrical telegraph, Transatlantic telegraph cable, Invention of the telephone, and History of the telephone

Stock telegraph ticker machine by Thomas Edison

A very early experiment in electrical telegraphy was an 'electrochemical' telegraph created by the German physician, anatomist and inventor Samuel Thomas von Sömmering in 1809, based on an earlier, less robust design of 1804 by Catalan polymath and scientist Francisco Salvá i Campillo.[5] Both their designs employed multiple wires (up to 35) in order to visually represent almost all Latin letters and numerals. Thus, messages could be conveyed electrically up to a few kilometers (in von Sömmering's design), with each of the telegraph receiver's wires immersed in a separate glass tube of acid. An electrical current was sequentially applied by the sender through the various wires representing each digit of a message; at the recipient's end the currents electrolysed the acid in the tubes in sequence, releasing streams of hydrogen bubbles next to each associated letter or numeral. The telegraph receiver's operator would visually observe the bubbles and could then record the transmitted message, albeit at a very low baud rate.[5] The principal disadvantage to the system was its prohibitive cost, due to having to manufacture and string-up the multiple wire circuits it employed, as opposed to the single wire (with ground return) used by later telegraphs.

The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed in England by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke. It used the deflection of needles to represent messages and started operating over twenty-one kilometres (thirteen miles) of the Great Western Railway on 9 April 1839. Both Wheatstone and Cooke viewed their device as "an improvement to the [existing] electromagnetic telegraph" not as a new device.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Samuel Morse independently developed a version of the electrical telegraph that he unsuccessfully demonstrated on 2 September 1837. Soon after he was joined by Alfred Vail who developed the register — a telegraph terminal that integrated a logging device for recording messages to paper tape. This was demonstrated successfully over three miles (five kilometres) on 6 January 1838 and eventually over forty miles (sixty-four kilometres) between Washington, DC and Baltimore on 24 May 1844. The patented invention

proved lucrative and by 1851 telegraph lines in the United States spanned over 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometres).[6]

The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was completed on 27 July 1866, allowing transatlantic telecommunication for the first time. Earlier transatlantic cables installed in 1857 and 1858 only operated for a few days or weeks before they failed.[7] The international use of the telegraph has sometimes been dubbed the "Victorian Internet".[8]

The conventional telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, based on his earlier work with harmonic (multi-signal) telegraphs. The first commercial telephone services were set up in 1878 and 1879 on both sides of the Atlantic in the cities of New Haven and London. Bell held the master patent for the telephone that was needed for such services in both countries. The technology grew quickly from this point, with inter-city lines being built and telephone exchanges in every major city of the United States by the mid-1880s.[9][10][11] Despite this, transatlantic voice communication remained impossible for customers until January 7, 1927 when a connection was established using radio. However no cable connection existed until TAT-1 was inaugurated on September 25, 1956 providing 36 telephone circuits.[12]

In 1880, Bell and co-inventor Charles Sumner Tainter conducted the world's first wireless telephone call via modulated lightbeams projected by photophones. The scientific principles of their invention would not be utilized for several decades, when they were first deployed in military and fiber-optic communications.

[edit] Radio and television

Main articles: History of radio and History of television

A 1950s television

In 1832, James Lindsay gave a classroom demonstration of wireless telegraphy to his students. By 1854 he was able to demonstrate a transmission across the Firth of Tay from Dundee to Woodhaven, a distance of two miles (3 km), using water as the transmission medium.[13]

Addressing the Franklin Institute in 1893, Nikola Tesla described and demonstrated in detail the principles of wireless telegraphy. The apparatus that he used contained all the elements that were incorporated into radio systems before the development of the vacuum tube. However it was not until 1900 that Reginald Fessenden was able to wirelessly transmit a human voice. In December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi established wireless communication between Britain and Newfoundland, earning him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1909 (which he shared with Karl Braun).[14]

On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird publicly demonstrated the transmission of moving silhouette pictures at the London department store Selfridges. In October 1925, Baird was successful in obtaining moving pictures with halftone shades, which were by most accounts the first true television pictures.[15] This led to a public demonstration of the improved device on 26 January 1926 again at Selfridges. Baird's first devices relied upon the Nipkow disk and thus became known as the mechanical television. It formed the basis of semi-experimental broadcasts done by the British Broadcasting Corporation beginning September 30, 1929.

However for most of the twentieth century televisions depended upon the cathode ray tube invented by Karl Braun. The first version of such a television to show promise was produced by Philo Farnsworth and crude silhouette images were demonstrated to his family on September 7, 1927. Farnsworth's device would compete with the concurrent work of Kalman Tihanyi and Vladimir Zworykin. Zworykin's camera, based on Tihanyi's Radioskop, which later would be known as the Iconoscope, had the backing of the influential Radio Corporation of America (RCA). In the United States, court action between Farnsworth and RCA would resolve in Farnsworth's favour.[16] John Logie Baird switched from mechanical television and became a pioneer of colour television using cathode-ray tubes.[15]

After mid-century the spread of coaxial cable and microwave radio relay allowed television networks to spread across even large countries.

[edit] Computer networks and the Internet

Main articles: Computer Networking -History and History of the Internet

On September 11, 1940, George Stibitz was able to transmit problems using teletype to his Complex Number Calculator in New York and receive the computed results back at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.[17] This configuration of a centralized computer or mainframe with remote dumb terminals remained popular throughout the 1950s. However it was not until the 1960s that researchers started to investigate packet switching — a technology that would allow chunks of data to be sent to different computers without first passing through a centralized mainframe. A four-node network emerged on December 5, 1969 between the University of California, Los Angeles, the Stanford Research Institute, the University of Utah and the University of California, Santa Barbara. This network would become ARPANET, which by 1981 would consist of 213 nodes.[18] In June 1973, the first non-US node was added to the network belonging to Norway's NORSAR project. This was shortly followed by a node in London.[19]

ARPANET's development centred around the Request for Comment process and on April 7, 1969, RFC 1 was published. This process is important because ARPANET would eventually merge with other networks to form the Internet and many of the protocols the Internet relies upon today were specified through this process. In September 1981, RFC 791 introduced the Internet Protocol v4 (IPv4) and RFC 793 introduced the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) — thus creating the TCP/IP protocol that much of the Internet relies upon today. A more relaxed transport protocol that, unlike TCP, did not guarantee the orderly delivery of packets called the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) was submitted on 28 August 1980 as RFC 768. An e-mail protocol, SMTP, was introduced in August 1982 by RFC 821 and http://1.0 a protocol that would make the hyperlinked Internet possible was introduced on May 1996 by RFC 1945.

However not all important developments were made through the Request for Comment process. Two popular link protocols for local area networks (LANs) also appeared in the 1970s. A patent for the Token Ring protocol was filed by Olof Söderblom on October 29, 1974.[20] And a paper on the Ethernet protocol was published by Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs in the July 1976 issue of Communications of the ACM.[21]

Internet access became widespread late in the century, using the old telephone and television networks.

[edit] Timelines

Timeline of telecommunications

[edit] Distance telecommunications

Visual signals (non-electronic):

Prehistoric: Fires, Beacons, Smoke signals 6th century BC: Mail 5th century BC: Pigeon post

4th century BC: Hydraulic semaphores 490 BC: Heliographs 15th century AD: Maritime flags 1790 AD: Semaphore lines 19th century AD: Signal lamps

Audio signals:

Prehistoric: Communication drums, Horns 1838 AD: Electrical telegraph. See: Telegraph history. 1876: Telephone. See: Invention of the telephone, History of the telephone, Timeline of

the telephone 1880: Photophone 1896: Radio. See: History of radio.

Advanced electrical/electronic signals:

1927: Television. See: History of television 1930: Videophone 1964: Fiber optical telecommunications 1969: Computer networking 1981: Analog cellular mobile phones 1982: SMTP email 1983: Internet. See: History of Internet 1998: Satellite phones

Bill's 200-Year Condensed History of Telecommunications

William von Alven,Manager, FCC Part 68 Operations

May 1998

 

First, a few notes on the 14th Part 68 Training Seminar held in Albuquerque on February 18 - 20 , 1998. These seminars, always well-attended, are very important for assuring "experience retention". Human beings are very ephemeral. When they retire, change jobs, or otherwise disappear, their experience goes with them. These seminars have been and will be an excellent means for assuring continuity of information necessary to keep our multi-supplier telecommunications system working.

The first seminar was sponsored by EIA in 1979 and was held at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. The FCC's Part 68 Measurement Guide, developed by FCC engineer, Ed Lang, was the centerpiece of the meeting. About 450 people attended and the price was $35.00, including luncheon. Since then George Washington University sponsored five seminars at various locations over the country, and EIA/TIA sponsored the remainder at two-year intervals.

After the Phoenix seminar in 1990, a number of attendees asked me for a copy of my presentation in which I covered a list of events that led to the development of Part 68. I hadn't written my talk; however, it was published in the February 1990 issue of the Billboard. I am reprinting it here with some updates:

 

PRELUDE

1200 BC - Homer talks about signal fires in the Illiad.

700 BC to 300 AD - Carrier pigeons used in Olympic games

1588 AD - Arrival of the Spanish Armada announced by signal fires

Voice telegraphs used hundreds of years BC through the Middle Ages and in the Canary Islands today.

~1800 AD - A line of canon from Buffalo to NYC used to announce Gov. DeWitt Clinton's inaugural trip through the Erie Canal. It took 80 minutes.

 

EARLY BEGINNINGS

1791 - The Chappe brothers, in France, were in their teens and were going to schools some distance apart but visible to each other. They obtained permission to set up a signaling system so they could send messages to each other. Their semaphore system consisted of movable arms on a pole whose positions denoted letters of the alphabet.

1793 - The Chappe brothers established the first commercial semaphore system between two locations near Paris. Napoleon thought this was a great idea. Soon there were semaphore signaling systems covering the main cities of France. Semaphore signaling spread to Italy, Germany and Russia. Thousands of men were employed manning the stations. Speed: about 15 characters per minute. Code books came into play so that whole sentences could be represented by a few characters. Semaphores weren't very successful in England because of the fog and smog caused by the Industrial Revolution. Claude Chappe headed France's system for 30 years and then was "retired" when a new administration came into power. There were semaphore systems in the U.S., especially from Martha's Vineyard (an island near Cape Cod) and Boston, reporting

to Boston's Custom House on the movement of sailing ships. This was also true around New York City and San Francisco. Samuel F.B. Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, reportedly saw the semaphore system in operation in Europe. The last operational semaphore system went out of business in 1860. It was located in Algeria.

1840 - Congress was requested to provide funding for a semaphore system running from NYC to New Orleans. Samuel Morse, it is said, advised against funding of this system because of his work on developing the electric telegraph.

1843 - FAX invented by the Scotch physicist Alexander Bain.

1844 - Morse demonstrates the electric telegraph.

1851 - There are 51 telegraph companies in operation

1856 - Western Union formed by six men from Rochester, N.Y. They start an acquisition spree.

1861 - Both coasts are connected. There are now 2250 telegraph offices in operation nationwide.

1867 - The first Atlantic cable, promoted by Cyrus Field, was layed on July 27th.

1870 - Thomas Edison invents multiplex telegraphy.

1872 - Western Union buys the telegraph equipment manufacturing firm, Gray & Barton, and renamed it Western Electric.

 

THE TELEPHONE

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone. Elisha Gray files a patent application 3 hours after Bell. Over 600 patent suits filed during the next 11 years. Settled in Bell's favor. Bell offers his patent to Western Union for $100,000. I obtained the following item years ago from Warren Bender, of A.D. Little, Inc. Warren published it in an early issue of the Transactions of the IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society. I would like to share it with you.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and his financial backer, Gardiner G. Hubbard, offered Bell's brand new patent (No. 174,465) to the Telegraph Company - the ancestor of Western Union. The President of the Telegraph Company, Chauncey M. DePew, appointed a committee to investigate the offer. The committee report has often been quoted. It reads in part:

"The Telephone purports to transmit the speaking voice over telegraph wires. We found that the voice is very weak and indistinct, and grows even weaker when long wires are used between the transmitter and receiver. Technically, we do not see that this device will be ever capable of sending recognizable speech over a distance of several miles.

"Messer Hubbard and Bell want to install one of their "telephone devices" in every city. The idea is idiotic on the face of it. Furthermore, why would any person want to use this ungainly and impractical device when he can send a messenger to the telegraph office and have a clear written message sent to any large city in the United States?

"The electricians of our company have developed all the significant improvements in the telegraph art to date, and we see no reason why a group of outsiders, with extravagant and impractical ideas, should be entertained, when they have not the slightest idea of the true problems involved. Mr. G.G. Hubbard's fanciful predictions, while they sound rosy, are based on wild-eyed imagination and lack of understanding of the technical and economic facts of the situation, and a posture of ignoring the obvious limitations of his device, which is hardly more than a toy... .

"In view of these facts, we feel that Mr. G.G. Hubbard's request for $100,000 of the sale of this patent is utterly unreaso

The amusing thing about this letter, in retrospect, is that Bell obtained controlling interest in Western Union by 1882!

1876 - Edison invents the electric motor and the phonograph.

1877 - Western Union has first telephone line in operation between Somerville, MA and Boston.

1878 - First telephone directory, New Haven, CT, and had 21 listings.

1880 - American Bell founded. 30,000 phones in use. Bell spoke over a 1300-ft beam of light using his patented Photophone equipment.

1881 - Mr. Eckert who ran a telephone company in Cincinnati said he preferred the use of females to males as operators. "Their service is much superior to that of men or boys. They are much steadier, do not drink beer nor use profanity, and are always on hand."

1882 - Bell has controlling interest in Western Union and Western Electric.

1884 - Paul Nipkow obtains a patent in Germany for TV, using a selenium cell and a mechanical scanning disk. First long distance call: Boston to NYC.

1885 - Theodore Vail becomes President of AT&T. Leaves in 1887 to go to South America to install electric traction systems.

1890 - Herman Hollerith gets a contract for processing the 1900 census data using punched cards. His firm was eventually named IBM in 1924.

 

MATURATION

1892 - Amon Strowger, the St. Louis undertaker, became upset on finding that the wife of a competitor was a telephone operator who made his line busy and transferred calls meant for him to her husband. "Necessity is the mother of invention" so Strowger developed the dial telephone system to get the operator out of the system. He forms a Chicago firm, Automatic Electric, to manufacture step-by-step central office equipment (which is now owned by GTE). The first automatic C.O. was installed in LaPorte, Indiana. I discovered in Ralph Meyer's book, Old Time Telephones, that actually, in 1879, Connelly, Connelly and McTighe patented an automatic dial system, although they did not commercialize it.

1893 - An early form of broadcasting was started in Budapest over 220 miles of telephone wires serving 6000 subscribers who could listen at regular schedules to music, news, stock market prices, poetry readings and lectures.

1900 - John J. Carty, Chief Engineer of NY Tel (and later AT&T), installs loading coils, invented by Michael Pupin, to extend range and utilizes open wire transposition to reduce crosstalk an inductive pickup from ac transmission lines. AT&T paid Pupin $255,000 for the use of his patent. There are now about 20,000 telcos in business. There are now 856,000 telephones in service.

1906 - Lee deForest invents the vacuum tube.

1907 - States start to regulate telcos. Mississippi was among the first. (The idea of regulation goes back several centuries, when in England, innkeepers were required to post their charges to prevent gouging. (I wish it applied to plumbers.) "Common carrier" regulation refers to government approval of tariffs filed by railroads, truck lines, telcos, etc which provide the terms and conditions whereby the public can make use of their services.

1907 -Theodore Vail returns as President of AT&T (and Western Union). He is responsible for the concept of "end-to-end" service that guided AT&T and other telcos in providing the C.O., transmission systems, and CPE that lasted until the Carterphone and Specialized Common Carrier Decisions.

1909 - Western Union and AT&T are closely locked.

1910 - Peter DeBye in Holland, develops theory for optical waveguides. He was a few years ahead of his time. Interstate Commerce Commission starts to regulate telcos.

1913 - The Kingsbury Agreement. Mr. Kingsbury was an AT&T vice president. In his famous letter to the U.S. Government, AT&T agrees to divest its holdings of Western Union, stop acquisition of other telcos, and permit other telcos to interconnect.

1914 - Underground cables link Boston, NYC and Washington.

1915 - Vacuum tube amplifiers used the first time in coast-to-coast telco circuits. In opening the service, Bell, in New York, repeated his famous first telephone sentence to his assistant, Mr.Watson, who was in San Francisco, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson replied,

"If you want me, it will take me almost a week to get there." E.T. Whitaker develops the sampling theorem that forms the basis of today's PCM and TCM technologies.

1920 - Bell introduces its own step-by-step offices that were previously acquired from Automatic Electric. G. Valensi develops the time domain multiplexing concept.

1921 - The Willis-Graham Act allows telcos to merge with permission of the States and the Interstate Commerce Commission.

1925 - Bell Telephone Laboratories founded. 1.5 million dial telephones in service out of 12 million phones in service.

1926 - Baird in Scotland and Jenkins in the U.S. demonstrate TV using neon bulbs and mechanical scanning disks. P.M. Rainey at Western Electric patents the PCM methodology.

1928 - Zworykin files patents on electronic scanning TV using the iconoscope.

1930 - AT&T introduces much higher quality insulated wire.

1934 - Federal Communications Commission founded. Combined functions of RF spectrum allocation previously handled by the Federal Radio Commission and interstate regulation for common carriers. Introduced "value-of-service" pricing which required the subsidization of residential subscribers to speed the availability of nationwide telephone service.

1935 - First telephone call around the world. About 6700 telcos in operation.

1937 - Bell introduces the Model 300 improved handset.

1938 - Bell introduces crossbar central office switches.

1939 - WU introduces coast-to-coast fax service. John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry invent the first electronic computer at the Iowa State University. In 1973 a judge ruled in a patent infringement suit that their research was the source of most of the ideas for the modern computer.

1941- Konrad Zuse in Germany develops the first programmable calculator using binary numbers and boolean logic.

1943 - Philadelphia is the last city to have telephone service supplied by different local carriers (until the recent deregulatory moves by Congress and the FCC.) Western Union and Postal Telegraph permitted to merge.

1945 - AT&T lays 2000 miles of coax cable. Arthur C. Clarke proposes communications satellites.

1946 - AT&T televises Army-Navy game in Philadelphia and transmits it to NYC

1946 - AT&T has 8 VF channels on microwave from Catalina Island to Los Angeles. Raytheon has a microwave link transmitting audio from WQXR in NYC to Boston.

1946 - FCC's Recording Devices Docket required telcos to furnish connecting arrangements for conversation recorders. The use of "beep tones" required when conversations are recorded.

1947 - Telcos install nationwide numbering plan. BTL has a 96-channel PCM experimental system working between Murray Hill, N.J. and NYC and quickly discovers the need for repeaters for long-distance service.On December 23, BTL introduces the germanium point contact transistor and in the following year the alloy junction germanium transistor. TI introduces the silicon-based transistor in 1958.

1949 - AT&T introduces the famous black rotary Model 500 telephone.

1949 - Bell Labs publishes Shannon's seminal theory of relay logic so important in the development of modern computers.

1949 - FCC's Jordaphone Docket (1949 - 1954). A precursor to Part 68. Jordaphone and three other manufacturers of answering machines sought FCC approval for their use on telco lines. The FCC decision left the matter to the states as only about 1% of telephone calls at that time were interstate. Commissioner Frieda Hennock filed her famous opposition in favor of the petitioners.

1950 - 75% of lines are party lines.

1952 - The first database was implemented on RCA's Bizmac computer. Reynold Johnson, an IBM engineer, developed a massive hard disk consisting of fifty platters, each two feet wide, that rotated on a spindle at 1200 rpm with read/write heads. These were called "jukeboxes".

1954 - Gene Amdahl developed the first computer operating system for the IBM 704. Sony introduces the first transistor radio that sold for $49.95. Raytheon introduces the transistor for hearing aids replacing its line of subminiature tubes. Zenith's highly successful hearing aids using subminiature tubes, about the size of a pack of cigarettes with a separate battery pack sold for about $25.00. The new transistor hearing aids reduced the size of the electronic package to about the size of a box of matches with an internal battery and sold for about $100. The first in-the-ear hearing aids appeared about 1955-1956.

1955 - According to Ken Krechmer, A.W. Morten and H.E. Vaughan describe the development of a real modem in their BSTJ paper, Transmission of Digital Information over Telephone Circuits, May 1955. Reynold Johnson at IBM develops the first disk drive.

1956 - AT&T's Consent Decree. In 1949, the Department of Justice wanted AT&T to divest itself of Western Electric.The court ignored the Department of Justice's request. Instead, as the result of the Consent Decree, AT&T got to keep WE; however, it could only stay in the field of telecommunications and it had to license its patents to others.

 

HUSH-A-PHONE DECISION

1956 -. Telco tariffs did not permit customers to add even shoulder rests, let alone noise reducing Hush-a-Phone cup over the microphone. In North Carolina, one was not permitted to place a cover on a telephone directory. (This latter issue was stricken by order of the North Carolina Supreme Court.) The Hush-a-Phone court decision was important because it permitted customer-provided equipment that a privately beneficial and not publicly harmful could be connected to the network. Hush-a-Phone permitted the use of acoustically and/or inductively coupled answering machines, such as Jordaphone, and also fax machines. Previously, AT&T permitted only Government and newspaper wire services to connect fax machines and wire photo equipment. One of the early founders of a fax manufacturing company met with Walter Gifford, President of AT&T in the early 1920s to obtain permission to connect wire line fax equipment to the network for use by newspapers. He said:

"Mr. Gifford, I believe you permit anyone to speak English over you network?"

Mr. Gifford replied, "Why, yes."

"How about foreign languages?"

"Yes, of course."

"Is it OK to whistle or to make unintelligible noises?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, how about my fax machine? It makes a noise similar to bleep, bleep, bleep."

Mr. Gifford did not object and the news services got permission to connect their fax and wire photo equipment.

1957 - October 4, the Russians launched the first satellite, Sputnik.

 

INVENTION OF THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT

1958 - AT&T introduces datasets (modems) for direct connection. Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments, developed the first integrated circuit. TI introduces the silicon-based transistor which soon eclipsed germaninum devices in production volume. Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation develops the first transistorized computer, Model 1604. He later uses liquid nitrogen to enhance the speed of CDC's line of supercomputers.

1959 - AT&T introduces the TH-1 1860-channel microwave system. The FCC's Above 890 MHz Decision allowed private microwave systems.

1960 - AT&T installs first electronic switching system in Morris, IL.There are now 3299 telephone companies.

1961 - Bell Telephone Labs release design information for the touch-tone dial to Western Electric.

1962 - AT&T introduces T-1 multiplex service in Skokie, IL. Telephone cables now start to use plastic insulation. Paul Baron of RAND introduces the idea of distributed packet-switching networks.

1962 - Comsat formed. American Broadcasting Company requests FCC to allow domestic satellites to distribute TV programs. Approximately 10,000 computers are in service.

1964 - IBM releases its famous Model 360 computer that eventually led to $100 billion in sales over its life cycle. George Heilmeier, at RCA's research labs, invents the liquid crystal display. Douglas Englebart at SRI patented the idea of the mouse.

1965 - AT&T introduces stored program controlled switching. There are now 2421 telephone companies.

 

CARTERPHONE DECISION

1966 - Tom Carter sues AT&T to permit connection of his phone patch. Court remands the case to FCC. (One writer stated Tom Carter filed for $1.25 million damages and received $300K. His original complaint had been filed in 1958.)

1967 - Larry Roberts at the Advanced Research Projects Agency publishes a paper proposing ARPANET.

1968 -FCC approves Carterphone Decision. AT&T ordered to revise tariffs effective 1/1/69 to permit connection of CPE. (It took about 10 years of legal action to get Part 68 of the FCC rules in place and operational by 1978). AT&T starts development of the Integrated Digital Services Network (ISDN). Gary Englehart at Stanford Research Institute demonstrates the first combination of a keyboard, keypad, mouse, windows and word processor. Dan Noble, IBM, developed the 8-inch floppy disk. Its capacity increased from 33K in 1971 to 1200K in 1977. AT&T starts 56 Kbps service. Pieter Kramer (Philips) invents the compact disk.

1969 - FCC asks National Academy of Science to recommend an interconnection policy. The Department of Defense initiates the ARPANet, which led to the development of Internet. Initially computers at Stanford University and UCLA are connected.

1970 - AT&T introduces its ESS#2 electronic switch. Intel introduces its popular 4004 4-bit microprocessor which starts the evolution of Intel"s famous line of 386, 486 and Pentium processors. There are now 1841 telephone companies. AT&T permitted to sell its teletype (TWX) service to Western Union.FCC approves the Domestic Satellite Order (which was nine years in the making).

1970 - Bell Telephone Labs release design information to Western Electric for the production of Modular Telephone Cords and Jacks.

1971 - The NAS Report recommended that an equipment certification program could be established to prevent harm to the network caused by hazardous voltages, excessive signal power, improper network control signaling and line imbalance. FCC establishes the PBX and Dialer and Answering Devices Committees to recommend certification standards based on the NAS Report. Satellite decision (nine There was also the Computer I Decision. (Western Union wanted to make use of excess CO computer capacity to do data processing. This decision led to procedures to assure no cross-subsidization between regulated and unregulated activities.) Gary Starkweather, Xerox, patents first laser printer. A couple of years later HP and Canon jointly introduce the first commercial laser printers. FCC establishes the PBX Advisory Committee and the Dialer and Answering Devices Committee and were terminated on the approval of Part 68. The PBX Committee's report was turned over to EIA where it eventually as a voluntary standard, 470. The Dialer and Answering Devices meetings were so contentious that no report was published. The Specialized Common Carrier Decision allowed MCI to get its private line service started over its St. Louis - Chicago route

1973 - Docket 19419 on Pricing of Datasets opened up the necessary technical background for Docket 19528 which led to the development of Part 68. This docket also established a Federal-State Joint Board. A two-week cross-examination of Larry Hohmann, AT&T's Director of Engineering by FCC attorney Michael Slomin provides much of the technical information that led to Part 68 of the FCC's Rules.The Joint Board's recommendations were adopted in part. A companion docket covered standardization of physical connectors needed for the interconnection program proceeded in parallel. In Docket 19808, the famous Telerent Decision, the Commission permitted states to have their own interconnection programs so long as they were no more stringent than the Federal program. This decision was appealed twice to the 4th Circuit Court then went all the way to the Supreme Court for final approval. (As a result telcos when they want to initiate a special intrastate service must file a tariff for the service and a "network disclosure" document that clearly identifies service and equipment requirements.) Docket 20003 was an economic study prepared by the Commission for Congress to show estimated economic effects of permitting private ownership of telephone terminal equipment an permitting competition in interstate telecommunications. The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is introduced making it easier to transfer data information. Harvard grants a PhD to Bob Metcalf . His thesis describes Ethernet.

1973 - Bell Telephone Labs released design information to Western Electric for production of the Com-Key 416, the first KTU-less key system which was less susceptible to damage caused by lightning storms.

1974 - First domestic satellites in operation. AT&T introduces the digital subsriber loop. BBN opens the first public packet-switched network. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn discuss connecting networks together to form an "internet". They collaborate in creating aTransmission Control Protocol (TCP). The Department of Justice files its antitrust suit against AT&T. The Consent Decree, resulting therefrom, required AT&T to divest itself of the 24 Bell Operating Companies by 1984. Value-added (packet-switched networks) come on the scene.

1975 - Summary: There are now 1618 telcos and 140 million phones in the U.S. Bell companies supply 85% of the lines; GTE: 10%. Smallest telco had 19 subscribers. About this time the last manual telco switchboard in Maine is retired.

Notes on GTE: Started in 1918 in Wisconsin by two men who bought the Richland Center Telephone Co. On vacation in California, they discovered a telco for sale for $1 million. Its purchase was financed by Paine Webber. By 1945, they owned 22 telcos in 19 states. In 1955, they merged with Gary Telephone which owned Automatic Electric (founded by Amon Strowger). In 1957, they picked up telco properties in Florida and in 1959, Lenkurt, a manufacturer of microwave equipment.

1975 - BTL released production design information to Western Electric for electronic key systems.

 

PART 68 ADOPTED

1975 continued -. The First Report and Order in Docket 19528 led to Part 68 of FCC rules. A court stay was lifted on June 16, 1976 to permit the registration program to go into effect for toll restrictors, answering machines and data modems. Popular Electronics features the MITS Altair 8800 computer which is considered the first personal computer. Fiber optics being trialed in the U.S. and Europe. FCC's Docket 20099 meetings from 1974 through 1983 establishes carrier-to-carrier interconnection standards. After the breakup of the Bell System, this activity was taken over by the Exchange Carriers Standards Association, later known as the Alliance for Telecommmunications Industry Solutions (ATIS). Docket 20774 establishes standard plugs and jacks for the registration program.

1976 - Digital radio and time division switching introduced. Alan Shugart, IBM, introduced the 5.25-in floppy in 1976. (Much later, in 1987, SONY introduced the 3.5" floppy). Floppies were first introduced with IBM's PCs when they first came on the market in 1981. The telephone companies support "The Consumers Communications Reform Act of 1976" H.R. 12323, which was endorsed by more than 90 members of the House. This proposed legislation would have retained the telephone companies' monopoly. The FCC counters with its Docket 20003, Economic Implications and Interrelationships Arising from Policies and Practices Relating to Cusotmer Interconnection, Jurisdictional Separations and Rate Structures .Resale and sharing of carrier services permitted. Other Common Carriers (OCCs) now have access to telco Foreign Exchange (FX) and Common Control Switching Arrangement (CCSA) private network facilities.

1977 - The Second Report and Order in Docket 19528 survived challenge in the Court of Appeals 4th Circuit. This item provided rules for telephones, key systems and PBXs. The order was challenged again all the way to the Supreme Court, which permitted the registration program to begin on October 17, 1977. The FCC completed program implementation rules by July 1, 1978 in the Third Report and Order. Registration of phones, KTSs and PBXs begin. MCI wins a court challenge to its Execunet Service which permitted the public to make use of its long distance facilities.

1978 - Commission rejects telephone companies' request for the Primary Instrument Concept in which all subscribers would be required to have at least one phone provided by the telephone company.

1979 - The Fourth Report and Order established rules regarding equipment-to-equipment connections. Docket 79-143 established rules for analog OPS and tie line equipment. GTE requests FCC to convene a special task group to develop recommendations for inclusion of T-1 services into Part 68. Dan Brinklin, while still in college, introduces the Visicalc spreadsheet which becomes a spectacular success. Docket 79-105 requires telcos to stop capitalizing premises wiring and the states set up amortization schedules for the eventual transfer of premises wiring ownership to the premises owners.

1980 - AT&T introduces the DataSpeed 40, a forerunner of the current generation "smart terminals" having the capability of doing various forms of data processing rather than serving solely as input terminal to a computer. This led to the Computer II Decision which came up with a binary test: Was the device for "basic" service; or was it for "enhanced" service? Enhanced services had three subdivisions: Protocol conversion, data processing, and information retrieval. All of this led to the Computer III Decision and the Open Network Architecture concept in 1989. Digital local offices and optical fiber transmission being deployed. Switching System #7 is being gradually deployed.

1981 - Docket 81-216, the "Omnibus Docket" was so called because it contained about two dozen items, including make-busy, digital systems, more on premises wiring, party lines, reducing dc on-hook resistance requirements and many more. It took several years to clear all of these items. Hayes introduces its landmark 300-bps modem. IBM introduces its PC in August 1981.

1981 - Bell Telephone Labs design of a network-embedded database of Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) for calling card customers to be accessed by public telephones over Signaling System 7. (Today, improved architectures of this kind underlie all Intelligent Network servicesd.)

1983 - In the CBEMA Decision, an outgrowth of the Computer II Decision, the Commission requires telcos to publish a "Network Disclosure" statement providing information of interconnection and operability requirements for new services. Carolyn Doughty, Bell Telephone Laboratories, files a patent on Caller ID.

 

BREAKUP OF AT&T

1984 - Court orders divestiture of AT&T based on Department of Justice suit. Fred Henck, publisher of Telecommunications Reports and Bernie Strassburg, retired Chief of the Common Carrier Bureau, in their book covering the divestiture of AT&T estimated that legal fees and settlements cost AT&T more than $5 billion. (A Slippery Slope - The Long Road to the Breakup of AT&T)

FCC decisions released relative to turning over previously installed premises wiring to premises owners; Congressionally mandated hearing aid-compatibility requirements for "essential" phones. FCC permits registration of privately owned "instrument operated" coin phones.

1985 - FCC decisions related to registration of CPE for T-1 and subrate digital services

1986 - FCC decision to phase out line-powered channel service units. The National Science Foundation introduces its 56kbps backbone network.

1987 - Ameritech files for registration of switched 56 Kbps digital service CPE. This was integrated with the SW Bell petition to include ISDN in the rules in October of 1991. (It took until 1991 for EIA to develop technical standards for this service.) Bellcore introduces the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) concept which has the potential of multimedia transmission over the nation's copper loops. SONY introduces the 3.5-in floppy. Philip Estridge, IBM, developed the first hard drive for PCs. It held 10MB. N.J. Bell is the first to implement Caller ID.

1988 - Congress passes the Telecom Trade Act of 1988 in response to alleged dumping of telecom systems in the U.S. by foreign manufacturers. One aspect was the requirement of all imported telecom equipment to comply with all applicable FCC requirements. Enforcement is by U.S. Customs.

1988 - FCC issues Docket 88-57, based on an EIA petition for clarification of previous premises wiring policies. (An order was released in 1990 which elicited about ten petitions for reconsideration. Th

The 1800s (Early History and Great Fervor)

1844 - - First public demonstration of Morse's electric telegraph, Baltimore to Washington.

1847 - - Alexander Graham Bell born in Edinburgh, Scotland.

1854 - - Thomas A. Watson born.

1858 - - First Atlantic telegraph cable completed but failed after 26 days due to the voltage being too high.

1861 - - Beginning of coast to coast telegraph communication in the United States.

1866 - - Permanent communication is established by wire from the United States to Europe with the

completion of the second Atlantic telegraph cable.

1869 - - The partnership of Shawk and Barton is formed to take over an electric shop which Western Union Telegraph Company has abandoned. This partnership ultimately becomes Western Electric Company. George Shawk eventually sells his interest in the firm to Elisa Gray. The firm becomes Gray and Barton and remains that way for two years. Gray devoted himself totally to electric research and was working on a harmonic telegraph at the same time as Bell. The idea of transmitting sounds occurred to him and he filed a caveat ( a confidential report of an invention which is not fully perfected) in the U.S. Patent Office. His caveat indicates that he was on the same track as Bell but had not worked out his transmitter as fully. On the same day, a few hours earlier, Bell filed a patent application for his telephone. Gray when on to invent the telautograph which transmits facsimile handwriting and drawings. Gray died in 1901.

1870 - - Alexander Graham Bell moves to Canada with his parents after the death of this two brothers of tuberculosis.

1872 - - The firm of Gray and Barton becomes Western Electric Manufacturing Company, of Chicago. - - Bell takes up permanent residence in the United States at 35 Newton Street, Boston where he conducts normal classes for teachers of the deaf.

1873 - - Erection of the Western Union Telegraph Building begins at Broadway and Dey Street in New York - the site eventually becomes AT&T Company headquarters. - - Bell begins his experiments on a harmonic telegraph which led to his invention of the telephone.

1874 - - Bells takes out his first papers for Citizenship in the United States. (He is admitted to citizenship on second papers, November 10, 1882.)

1875 - - First "gallows type" telephone tested by Bell and Thomas Watson in an attic room at 109 Court Street, Boston. It transmitted recognizable speech sounds but not intelligible speech.

1876 - - Bell files his patent application. First telephone patent (U.S. No. 174,465) allowed and issued to Bell on March 7th. - - March 10th, Bell speaks the first complete sentence transmitted by variable resistance transmitter ... "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" - - Bell lectures on and exhibits telephone apparatus at the Society of Arts, Boston; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston and the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. - - The world's first long distance telephone call (one-way) was received at Paris, Ontario by Bell from his father and uncle at Brantford, Ontario over "borrowed" telegraph lines. - - Gardiner Greene Hubbard, one of Bell's financial backers and sharer in Bell's patents, offers to sell the telephone invention to Western Union Telegraph Company for $100,000. Western Union refuses the offer. - - The world's first two way long distance telephone conversation over an outdoor wire (borrowed telegraph line) takes place between Cambridgeport and Boston, Massachusetts between Bell and Watson.

1877 - - First telephones rented for business use, on a private line between Boston and Somerville, Massachusetts. - - First service rental paid for telephones (private use) in Charlestown, Massachusetts ($20 for 2 Telephones for 1 Year). - - The telephone business is formally organized with the drawing up of papers to form the Bell Telephone Company. - - First Bell Stock Issue of 5,000 shares to seven original stockholders. Alexander Graham Bell (10), Mabel G. Bell (1497), Gardiner G. Hubbard (1387), Gertrude McC. Hubbard (100), Thomas Sanders (1497), Thomas A. Watson (499) and Charles Eustis Hubbard (10).

1878 - - The first commercial telephone exchange is the world is opened at New Haven, Connecticut with 21 subscribers on January 28th. - - The first exchange in California is opened at San Francisco on February 17th. - - The first telephone directory is published by the New Haven District Telephone Co. (21 Listings) on February 21st. - - The first exchange in New York State is opened at Albany on March 18th. - - Competition develops in the telephone industry as Western Union Telegraph Company establishes subsidiaries including the American Speaking Telephone Company and Gold & Stock Telephone Company using transmitters by Thomas A. Edison and receivers by Elisha Gray. - - The first exchange in Massachusetts opens in Lowell on April 19th. - - The first telephone exchange outside of the United States is opened in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on July 15th. - - The Bell Telephone company files suite against Peter A. Dowd, head of the American

Speaking Telephone Company (Western Union Subsidiary) to protect the Bell patents against Edison and Gray infringements. (September 12th.) - - First five telephones connected with a central office switchboard in Washington D.C. takes place on December 1st. The White House is No. 1; Capitol No. 2; Associated Press No. 3; Treasury Dept. No. 4; and the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb (later Gallaudet College) No. 5. The central office was a 24 wire peg switch.

1879 - - (February 17th) National Bell Telephone Company formed. The purpose of this organization was to combine the first New England Telephone Company and the Bell Telephone Company into a nationwide licensing company in order to speed the establishment of telephone service to cities throughout the country. (Dissolved by decree of court, December 8, 1903).-- Telephone Numbers. The latter part of 1879 and the early part of 1880 saw the first use of telephone numbers at Lowell, Massachusetts. This story is that during an epidemic of measles, Dr. Moses Greeley Parker feared that Lowell's four operators might succumb and bring about a paralysis of telephone service. He recommended the use of numbers for calling Lowell's more than 200 subscribers so that substitute operators might be more easily trained in the event of such an emergency. The telephone management at Lowell feared that the public would take the assignment of numbers as an indignity but the telephone users saw the practical value of the change immediately and it went into effect with no stir whatsoever. (Although attempts had been made, the implementation of dial telephone systems had yet to occur.)

1880 - - the first telephone pay stations (not coin boxes but attended telephones) are opened in certain districts of New York.

1881 - - The first commercially successful long distance line, 45 miles between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, is opened for business on January 12th. - - Western Electric Manufacturing Company becomes simply Western Electric and acquires the only existing licenses to make Bell equipment through purchase and expirations of existing contracts. (November 26th).

1882 - - Agreement between American Bell (formerly National Bell Telephone Company) and Western Electric whereby the latter becomes sole suppliers of Bell telephones and telephone equipment. - - Alexander Graham Bell admitted to citizenship in the United States by the Supreme Court, District of Columbia (November 10th)

1883 - - Bell Laboratories continues its evolution...formed as the Electrical and Patent Department of American Bell Telephone Company in 1883 and changed to Mechanical Department in 1884.

1884 - - The New York to Boston line is opened for commercial service on September 4th. (Rates: $2.00 daytime; $1.00 at night)

1885 - - The certificate of incorporation for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company is filed in New York City. Its broad claim...to establish telephone communication to cities on the American continent and elsewhere around the world by wire, cable and "other appropriate means".

1886 - - AT&T begins to offer private line service.

1887 - - November 1st marks the first differentiation between day and night long distance rates coming into effect, with night rates in most, but not all, instances lower than day rates.

1888 - - The first pay telephone which required the deposit of a coin to gain access to the telephone instrument was brought out by William Gray. (Important to note that the pay telephone was not the first coin operated device. These devices were long in use before Bell invented the telephone.)

1889 - - The first public coin telephone was installed at Hartford, Conn. Most AT&T long distance calls at this time originate at company pay stations or at special "direct loop" stations installed for subscribers. - - The Blue Bell is approved by AT&T for use in advertising long distance stations.

1890 - - The Bell system begins to exchange its wire plant from single wire to two-wire circuits. The process

will take most of the next ten years.

1891 - - The Strowger machine-switching system was patented. Almon B. Strowger, using a collar box and handy bits of metal, devised a central office switching system wherein the telephone user should not be dependent on the operators. His central office could serve only 99 subscribers. Once certain drawbacks were ironed out over the next few years, the Strowger switch came to be known as the step-by-step office.

1892 - - First commercial step-by-step machine switching exchange opens in La Porte, Indiana on November 3rd. The system is provided by the Automatic Electric Company under Strowger patents.

1893 - - Expiration of the first Bell patent makes it possible for anyone who so desired to make telephone equipment and sell telephone service. A combination of circumstances brought a great many independent exchanges and systems in being. In many cities, companies opened in competition with Bell exchanges and the public found it necessary to subscribe to both Bell and the competing service.

1895 - - A letter from J. W. Thompson, City Manager for the Chicago Telephone Company, to Miss Mesick, Chief Operator, Main, says "In answering calls the query 'Number Please?' spoken in a pleasant tone of voice and with rising inflection must be invariably employed.". This is the first official instruction we have found for this phrase. Earlier responses of telephone operators appears to have been "What do you want?" or sometimes "Hello?".

1896 - - Dial telephones - the first machine switching telephones with finger wheels resembling those of today - were placed in service at the city hall of Milwaukee, Wisconsin by the Automatic Electric Company. Earlier version of the dial telephones by AEC actually used push buttons.

1899 - - AT&T takes over the business and property of the American Bell Telephone Company becoming parent company of the Bell system while continuing as the long lines operating company.