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Show X ' ' ' v' ' 'it OUTDATED SET-UP. A fish-eye lens captures connections in Salt Lake City. Modern the now vacant facilities once used for operator technology has totally outdated the system. Centennial Anniversary of Telephone notes many changes As the nation's bicentennial draws to a close, so does the centennial anniversary of an invention which, by most standards, stan-dards, has had as much impact on the American lifestyle and workstyle as any other during our 200-year history -- the telephone. From Alexander Graham Bell's "talking box", came a system which connected the nation together by a telephone network few dreamed possible. A man with vision, Bell himself predicted that "wires will unite the head offices of the telephone company in different cities and a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place." This prophecy, bold and outlandish at the time it was made in 1876, had been more than fulfilled even before Bell's death in 1922. His progressive attitude" i notwithstanding, Bell would be both amazed and proud at, the state of telephony as it begins its second century. Before World War II, much of additional capacity and flexibility to the long distance network. ' v. In early 1977, the highest capacity interchange in history will be introduced in the Chicago area. This digital electronic toll switching machine will handle up to 550,000 calls per hour-more than four times the capacity of present equipment. The speed by which a call can be placed will also increase dramatically over the next decade. Signals needed to establish dialed toll call connections con-nections will, for the first time, be carried on different circuits than the calls themselves. The net result will be to reduce call setup times to as little as two seconds in some cases. A new method of collecting tolls in phone booths is also on the drawing boards. Automated Coin Toll Service (ACTS) uses a stored-program machine to "listen" to the digits being dialed, calculates the initial charge and reads the charge to the customer via a synthesized voice message. It "listens" to the coins being depostied and then forwards the call. ACTS has already been field tested in the Midwest with excellent ex-cellent results. While the most modern technology, and technology not yet developed, will continue to bring customers an ever more efficient telephone system, the ultimate total of the business will still be the same-Service. the effort was devoted tojmaking the telephone truly universal throughout the nation.' In 1914, the last pole was placed for the first transcontinental telephone line, an event at least as important im-portant as the linking of the continent by rail 45 years earlier. In 1919, the Bell System began a massive conversion from the colorful but inefficient "number please" method to dial phones with the completion of its first major installation of automatic machine switching. Following World War II, technical advancements came along with regularity. Three Bell Lab scientists invented the transistor in 1947, an invention which opened the flood gates of technological improvements not only in telephony but in many other areas as well. The three later received a Nobel Prize for their efforts. A year later, the first microwave radio system was installed between Boston and New York to carry both television and commercial calls. In 1952, direct distance dialing was inaugurated and a decade later . the first Telstar communications com-munications satellite was launched beginning a new era in overseas communications. Touchtone and picturephone followed closely on Telstatfaf' heels. While touchtone was (quickly accepted, picturephone has yet to realize its full potential. poten-tial. The 100 millionth telephone, a gold trimline, was presented to President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. Electronic switching became practical in 1970 with the introduction of the first electronic elec-tronic keyboard console for operators. This completes calls in a fraction of the time required by the older methods and keeps operator assistance at a minimum. But if the telephone of 1876 seems primitive by modern standard, current methods may be outdated in just a few short years. Telephone technology is advancing that rapidly. But these advancements are merely the first few raindrops of an impending deluge. Already experiments in lightwave communications, or the transmission of voice, video and other data over hair-thin glass fibers, have been conducted con-ducted with exciting results. Practical application, most likely in a metropolitan setting, seems to be feasible within the next decade. A new single-sideband transmission tran-smission system has the potential to double the capacity of the current coast-to-coast microwave radio network. The microwave system carries about two-thirds of the toll message traffic in the nation at the present time. v COMSTAR, the Bell System's first 'domestic satellite system went into effect this year. It lends |