Bell System Centennial: 100 Years of Publishing on Telecommunications

Copyright © 1976, American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Printed in U.S.A. Bell System Centennial: 100 Years of Publishing on Telecommunications This year the United States is celebrating the bicentennial of its founding--200 years of change, crises, and invention. At the beginning of the nation's second century, in March 1876, the "speaking telephone" was invented. With it began 100 years of research and development in telecommunications--a technology whose influence on the growth of the nation and, indeed, of all western nations, has been profound. The continual improvement and expansion of telecommunications has depended on the depth and diversity of technical research and development. And, if research and development is to encompass all the economic and physical requirements of a growing telecommunications system, it must be founded upon an active exchange of ideas. Inventiveness in any organization engaged in research and development can be ascribed not only to individual intelligence, but also to the participation of its members in the exchange of ideas--among its own people and throughout the scientific community. Indeed, it is apparent that the process of exchange is an active element in the development of ideas. For example, it is recorded that Alexander Graham Bell's invention sprang from a mistranslation of a German text. Bell had the impression from Helmholz's book Sejisations of Tone that the author had telegraphed vowel sounds over a wire. Although Bell later discovered the mistake, the idea led him to a study of electricity.