Thirtieth Anniversary

COPYRIGHT 1952, AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY Thirtieth Anniversary Thirty years ago this month T H E B E L L S Y S T E M T E C H N I C A L J O U R N A L began publication. Suggested by Dr. George A. Campbell, it had been under discussion for some years. Dr. R. W. King, who had been one of its most active advocates, became its editor when the staff of the J O U R N A L was established. Except for a six-year period following 1928, while he was in England, Dr. King continued as editor until he retired in 1949. By July, 1922, when No. 1, Vol. 1 of the J O U R N A L appeared, research and development was a long established practice in the Bell System. The high-vacuum electronic tube, which had already begun to revolutionize electrical communication, was itself a product of Bell System research. Since electrical communication was a still comparatively new Held of study, however, its publications were widely scattered. There seemed a need for a magazine that would serve the communication engineers exclusively, and it was largely to meet this need that T H E B E L L S Y S T E M T E C H N I C A L J O U R N A L was launched. In the thirty years since that time, the art and science of communication has advanced and ramified beyond anything likely to have been then foreseen. A very substantial part of this increase has originated within the Bell System, and this progress has been reflected in the pages of the T E C H N I C A L J O U R N A L . There seems little reason to doubt that the next three decades will witness an advance at least comparable with that of the past three, and it is planned to have the J O U R N A L present the work of the coming years, with perhaps even greater effectiveness than in the past.