AT&T The Mid 20th Century
ATT logo 1969 t0 1985

The image above shows the AT&T logo which was introduced in 1969 and which AT&T maintained until 1983.

The Zenith of AT&T

Developments at AT&T continued and 1941 saw the first installation of commercial coaxial cable in their network. This cable was laid between Minneapolis, Minnesota and Stevens Point, Wisconsin. The cable itself had been invented by AT&T in 1929. This installation represents the first commercial use of a broadband transmission medium.

In 1946 AT&T began to offer its first mobile telephone service. However, with a single antenna serving a region no more than 20 simultaneous calls could be made in a region that corresponded to an entire metropolitan area. A year later and AT&T developed the concept of cellular telephony using interlocking hexagonal 'cells' of transmitters. However, though the concept might have been theoretically achievable the technology did not exist at the time to realize the concept. In 1947 T&T Bell Telephone Laboratories scientists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley made a major advance in electronics by inventing the transistor, the first solid-state amplifier, which was the foundation stone for modern electronics.

During 1948 AT&T began offering networking services for television on facilities connecting major cities in the northeast and midwest. The service reached the west coast in 1951. Television networks use this service to transmit programming to their affiliated stations around the country.

One way AT&T succeeded to increase its control of the telephone system was through its leasing arrangements for telephones and telephone equipment made by its subsidiary, Western Electric. Like most telephones of the time in the United States, Western Electric-made phones were owned not by individual customers, but by local Bell System telephone companies - all of which were in turn owned by AT&T, which also owned Western Electric itself. Instead, each phone was leased from AT&T on a monthly basis by customers, who generally paid for their phone and its connection many times over in cumulative lease fees. This monopoly made millions of extra dollars for AT&T, which had the secondary effect of greatly limiting phone choices and styles. AT&T strictly enforced policies against buying and using phones by other manufacturers that had not first been transferred to and re-rented from the local Bell monopoly. Many phones made by Western Electric thus carried the following disclaimer permanently molded into their housings: "BELL SYSTEM PROPERTY — NOT FOR SALE."

Yet all this time AT&T was under scrutiny by the regulators and in 1949 the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit aimed at forcing the divestiture of Western Electric. This was settled in 1956 by a consent decree signed by AT&T and Department of Justice, and filed in court, whereby AT&T agreed to restrict its activities to the regulated business of the national telephone system and government work and to license its patents to 'all interested parties'. A key knock-on effect of this settlement was to ban AT&T from selling computers despite its key role in electronics research and development.

In terms of new technology AT&T opened its first microwave relay system between the cities of New York and Boston in 1948, and over the succeeding three decades added considerable microwave capacity to its nationwide long-distance network. In 1951 AT&T introduced customer-dialling (ie direct dialling) of long-distance calls. Initially this was piloted in Englewood, New Jersey and national rollout continued through the latter part of the 1950s. 1956 saw the introduction for service of TAT-1 the first trans-atlantic telephone cable. Initially the capacity was 36 simultaneous calls at a price per call of $12 for the first three minutes.

For much of the early 20th Century AT&T had been permitted to retain its monopoly status as it was assumed to be a 'natural monopoly' (ie only one firm in this industry is able to survive in the long run). But the first cracks in AT&T's status began in 1956 with the Hush-a-Phone v. FCC ruling which allowed a third-party device to be attached to rented telephones owned by AT&T.

Throughout the 1960s technological advances seemed to gather pace beginning with the milestone of the launch of Telstar I in 1962. This was the first commercial communications satellite and transmitted the first live television pictures across the Atlantic. A year later and the first touch-tone service was introduced. This had a keypad replacing the original telephone dial and was initially deployed in Greensburg and Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

1964 saw the opening of TPC-1, the first submarine telephone cable across the Pacific. This went from Japan to Hawaii where it onnected to two cables linking Hawaii with the mainland. This brought the same improvements to trans-Pacific service that TAT-1 had brought to trans-Atlantic service in 1956. Other technical advances allowed the transition from electromechanical to electronic components that allowed for new, more powerful, and (in the long run at least) less expensive equipment. As a result, in 1963 AT&T installed the world's first electronic telephone switch in a local telephone exchange in Succasunna, New Jersey.

It might be a surprise to many, but AT&T did not introduce the nationwide emergency number, 911, until 1968. Yet, despite these technical advances the writing was on the wall for AT&T. Indeed, the move to electronic components made it easier for third party manufacturers to produce equipment that would link with the AT&T network. Indeed, the 1968 Carterphone decision allowed third-party equipment to be connected the AT&T telephone network. More competition was also created during the 1960s and 1970s due to the availability of cheap microwave communications equipment which eliminated the bar of acquiring expensive rights-of-way access which was necessary for the construction of a long-distance wired network.

In many ways this point at the end of the 1960s represents the zenith of AT&T's fortunes.