Misplaced Pages

#100899

128-509: Call waiting was introduced to North America in the early 1970s when the first generation of electronic switch machines built by Western Electric , Electronic Signaling System 1 started to replace older mechanical equipment in the old Bell System local telephone companies. At first, some smaller municipalities were able to offer customers call waiting only on a specific phone exchange (e.g., phone customers in Trenton , Michigan initially had to have

256-671: A 440 Hz beep every ten seconds in North America), call waiting can cause dial-up Internet access connections to terminate, unless the modem supports the most recent V.92 modem standard. For this reason, call waiting is often disabled on shared voice lines used for dial-up modem or fax purposes. However, Call Waiting has no impact on DSL connections. Call waiting deluxe is the Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies ) term for Type II caller ID with Disposition Options. This CLASS -based POTS -telephone calling feature works by combining

384-622: A 54% share of the Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. Western Electric's representative in Japan was Walter Tenney Carleton . The company, later known as NEC, would eventually become a major international manufacturer of electronics equipment including semiconductors and personal computers. In 1901, Western Electric secretly purchased a controlling interest in a principal competitor, the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company , but in 1909

512-474: A Telex was a message sent by a Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network. A wirephoto or wire picture was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph . A diplomatic telegram, also known as a diplomatic cable , is a confidential communication between a diplomatic mission and the foreign ministry of its parent country. These continue to be called telegrams or cables regardless of

640-641: A Western Electric decision to join Haverhill and Lawrence locations in 1956 as the Merrimack Valley Works. In 1944, Western Electric purchased a factory in St. Paul, Minnesota to restart manufacture of telephone sets for civilian installation as authorized by War Production Board . By 1946, some of these facilities were relocated to the Hawthorne plant as space became available from war-production scale down. Also,

768-494: A close relationship with telegraph company Western Union , to whom they supplied relays and other equipment. In 1875, Gray sold his interests to Western Union, including the caveat that he had filed against Alexander Graham Bell 's patent application for the telephone . The ensuing legal battle between Western Union and the Bell Telephone Company over patent rights ended in 1879 with Western Union withdrawing from

896-448: A code by itself. The term heliostat is sometimes used as a synonym for heliograph because of this origin. The Colomb shutter ( Bolton and Colomb , 1862) was originally invented to enable the transmission of morse code by signal lamp between Royal Navy ships at sea. The heliograph was heavily used by Nelson A. Miles in Arizona and New Mexico after he took over command (1886) of

1024-587: A craftsman and telegraph maker, purchased an electrical engineering business in Cleveland, Ohio . In January 1869, Shawk had partnered with Enos M. Barton in the former Western Union repair shop of Cleveland, to manufacture burglar alarms, fire alarms, and other electrical items. Both men were former Western Union employees. Shawk, was the Cleveland shop foreman and Barton, was a Rochester, New York telegrapher. During this Shawk and Barton partnership, one customer

1152-466: A distance of a quarter of a mile. In the 1890s inventor Nikola Tesla worked on an air and ground conduction wireless electric power transmission system , similar to Loomis', which he planned to include wireless telegraphy. Tesla's experiments had led him to incorrectly conclude that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy and his 1901 large scale application of his ideas,

1280-446: A distance. This is to be distinguished from semaphore , which merely transmits messages. Smoke signals, for instance, are to be considered semaphore, not telegraph. According to Morse, telegraph dates only from 1832 when Pavel Schilling invented one of the earliest electrical telegraphs. A telegraph message sent by an electrical telegraph operator or telegrapher using Morse code (or a printing telegraph operator using plain text)

1408-570: A factory at that location and the Western Electric company known as W.E. Mfg. Co., at the time, had purchased Western Union's New York Factory to continue the increase of phone production. This site would also place the end to Western Union factories. The Boston shop was located at 109-115 Court Street and it was previously known as the Charles Williams, Jr factory that was purchased by Western Electric in 1882. The consolidation of operations

SECTION 10

#1733092565101

1536-436: A factory. On August 22, 1952, the facility opened to produce new electronic components for the U.S. government for use by the military and the space program. In the mid-1950s, Western Electric established several more satellite "Shops" that were smaller locations reporting to the larger "Works" locations. The "Montgomery Shops" were occupied in 1955 to produce Data-Phone data sets, wire spring relays, and test sets. Although, it

1664-473: A few days, sometimes taking all day to send a message despite the use of the highly sensitive mirror galvanometer developed by William Thomson (the future Lord Kelvin ) before being destroyed by applying too high a voltage. Its failure and slow speed of transmission prompted Thomson and Oliver Heaviside to find better mathematical descriptions of long transmission lines . The company finally succeeded in 1866 with an improved cable laid by SS Great Eastern ,

1792-529: A former Chief of the U.S. Military Telegraphs during the American Civil War , advanced money for Gray to buy the half-interest and become a partner when Gray and Barton moved operations to Chicago . Gray and Barton previously knew Stager and an agreement was signed on November 18, 1869, to launch the company as Gray & Barton. The firm was open for business by the end of the year in Chicago. In December 1869,

1920-510: A meeting of the top executives to decide whether I might remain with the Company, for it established a precedent and a new policy for the Company – that of married women in their employ. If the women at the top were permitted to remain after marriage then all women would expect the same privilege. The policy was expanded quickly, so that a few years later women were given maternity leaves with no loss of time on their service records." Western Electric

2048-540: A message was relayed 640 km (400 mi) in four hours. Miles' enemies used smoke signals and flashes of sunlight from metal, but lacked a sophisticated telegraph code. The heliograph was ideal for use in the American Southwest due to its clear air and mountainous terrain on which stations could be located. It was found necessary to lengthen the morse dash (which is much shorter in American Morse code than in

2176-489: A modification of surveying equipment ( Gauss , 1821). Various uses of mirrors were made for communication in the following years, mostly for military purposes, but the first device to become widely used was a heliograph with a moveable mirror ( Mance , 1869). The system was used by the French during the 1870–71 siege of Paris , with night-time signalling using kerosene lamps as the source of light. An improved version (Begbie, 1870)

2304-592: A natural rubber from the Palaquium gutta tree, after William Montgomerie sent samples to London from Singapore in 1843. The new material was tested by Michael Faraday and in 1845 Wheatstone suggested that it should be used on the cable planned between Dover and Calais by John Watkins Brett . The idea was proved viable when the South Eastern Railway company successfully tested a three-kilometre (two-mile) gutta-percha insulated cable with telegraph messages to

2432-551: A permanent plant. The 200,000 square-foot leased plant began in June 1971. In 1974, there were 490 IBEW employee members on strike over local agreement issues. In 1975, this San Ramon Valley Plant announced a September 30 closure of its telephone transmission equipment manufacturing operations. On January 27, 1983, the Kearny facility was announced for closure due to technology changes, underutilized, and too costly to maintain. The phase out of

2560-418: A phone number starting with 671 to have call waiting, since 671 was at that time the only exchange in that area served by one of the new ESS switches), but as demand for it became more widespread, it eventually became available on all phone exchanges as the older equipment was phased out. In Europe, call waiting was also introduced in the 1970s with the introduction of the first digital switching systems such as

2688-485: A popular means of sending messages once telegraph prices had fallen sufficiently. Traffic became high enough to spur the development of automated systems— teleprinters and punched tape transmission. These systems led to new telegraph codes , starting with the Baudot code . However, telegrams were never able to compete with the letter post on price, and competition from the telephone , which removed their speed advantage, drove

SECTION 20

#1733092565101

2816-651: A section chief and one maintenance man. In 1955, the Lawrence plant reached its peak employment at more than 2,000 employees. This Bell Labs research and development satellite had 40 Bell Telephone Laboratories engineers and 25 Western Electric employees. Carrier equipment used filters made with Polystyrene condensers at this Garfield Shops or later referred as Lawrence Shops. In 1952, the Reading plant began when Western Electric converted an old Rosedale knitting mill in Laureldale into

2944-596: A ship off the coast of Folkestone . The cable to France was laid in 1850 but was almost immediately severed by a French fishing vessel. It was relaid the next year and connections to Ireland and the Low Countries soon followed. Getting a cable across the Atlantic Ocean proved much more difficult. The Atlantic Telegraph Company , formed in London in 1856, had several failed attempts. A cable laid in 1858 worked poorly for

3072-423: A shopping center parking lot, with a remaining two buildings converted. A water tower is the remaining physical association of the industrial research complex where telephones, electronics, military equipment and business management innovations were produced by a facility that once existed. The Baltimore facility closed on February 28, 1986. The facility, which had once employed 6,200, was staffed by 65 employees on

3200-440: A single-needle telegraph was adapted to indicate just two messages: "Line Clear" and "Line Blocked". The signaller would adjust his line-side signals accordingly. As first implemented in 1844 each station had as many needles as there were stations on the line, giving a complete picture of the traffic. As lines expanded, a sequence of pairs of single-needle instruments were adopted, one pair for each block in each direction. Wigwag

3328-465: A statue originally named Electricity , but later renamed Spirit of Communication , which was raised to the roof of 195 Broadway on October 24, 1916. In 1915, the assets of Western Electric Manufacturing were transferred to a newly incorporated company in New York, New York , named Western Electric Company, Inc , a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. The sole reason for the transfer was to provide for

3456-640: A substantial distance was by Ronalds in 1816 using an electrostatic generator . Ronalds offered his invention to the British Admiralty , but it was rejected as unnecessary, the existing optical telegraph connecting the Admiralty in London to their main fleet base in Portsmouth being deemed adequate for their purposes. As late as 1844, after the electrical telegraph had come into use, the Admiralty's optical telegraph

3584-418: A system for mass distributing information on current price of publicly listed companies. In a punched-tape system, the message is first typed onto punched tape using the code of the telegraph system—Morse code for instance. It is then, either immediately or at some later time, run through a transmission machine which sends the message to the telegraph network. Multiple messages can be sequentially recorded on

3712-503: A system of communication that would allow the central government to receive intelligence and to transmit orders in the shortest possible time. On 2 March 1791, at 11 am, they sent the message "si vous réussissez, vous serez bientôt couverts de gloire" (If you succeed, you will soon bask in glory) between Brulon and Parce, a distance of 16 kilometres (10 mi). The first means used a combination of black and white panels, clocks, telescopes, and codebooks to send their message. In 1792, Claude

3840-534: A telefax machine. In 1855, an Italian priest, Giovanni Caselli , also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images. Caselli called his invention " Pantelegraph ". Pantelegraph was successfully tested and approved for a telegraph line between Paris and Lyon . In 1881, English inventor Shelford Bidwell constructed the scanning phototelegraph that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing. Around 1900, German physicist Arthur Korn invented

3968-461: A telegraph between St Petersburg and Kronstadt , but it was never completed. The first operative electric telegraph ( Gauss and Weber , 1833) connected Göttingen Observatory to the Institute of Physics about 1 km away during experimental investigations of the geomagnetic field. The first commercial telegraph was by Cooke and Wheatstone following their English patent of 10 June 1837. It

Call waiting - Misplaced Pages Continue

4096-481: A telephone not supplied by the Bell System had to first transfer the phone to the local Bell operating company, who leased the phone back to the customer for a monthly charge in addition to a re-wiring fee. In the 1970s when consumers increasingly bought telephone sets from other manufacturers, AT&T changed the policy for its Design Line telephone series by selling customers the phone housing, retaining ownership of

4224-465: Is a form of flag signalling using a single flag. Unlike most forms of flag signalling, which are used over relatively short distances, wigwag is designed to maximise the distance covered—up to 32 km (20 mi) in some cases. Wigwag achieved this by using a large flag—a single flag can be held with both hands unlike flag semaphore which has a flag in each hand—and using motions rather than positions as its symbols since motions are more easily seen. It

4352-546: Is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined, so such systems are thus not true telegraphs. The earliest true telegraph put into widespread use was the Chappe telegraph , an optical telegraph invented by Claude Chappe in

4480-512: Is a telegraph consisting of a line of stations in towers or natural high points which signal to each other by means of shutters or paddles. Signalling by means of indicator pointers was called semaphore . Early proposals for an optical telegraph system were made to the Royal Society by Robert Hooke in 1684 and were first implemented on an experimental level by Sir Richard Lovell Edgeworth in 1767. The first successful optical telegraph network

4608-458: Is a telegraph machine that can send messages from a typewriter-like keyboard and print incoming messages in readable text with no need for the operators to be trained in the telegraph code used on the line. It developed from various earlier printing telegraphs and resulted in improved transmission speeds. The Morse telegraph (1837) was originally conceived as a system marking indentations on paper tape. A chemical telegraph making blue marks improved

4736-447: Is that it permits duplex communication. The Wheatstone tape reader was capable of a speed of 400 words per minute. A worldwide communication network meant that telegraph cables would have to be laid across oceans. On land cables could be run uninsulated suspended from poles. Underwater, a good insulator that was both flexible and capable of resisting the ingress of seawater was required. A solution presented itself with gutta-percha ,

4864-625: The Bildtelegraph widespread in continental Europe especially since a widely noticed transmission of a wanted-person photograph from Paris to London in 1908 used until the wider distribution of the radiofax. Its main competitors were the Bélinographe by Édouard Belin first, then since the 1930s, the Hellschreiber , invented in 1929 by German inventor Rudolf Hell , a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission. The late 1880s through to

4992-648: The English Channel (1899), from shore to ship (1899) and finally across the Atlantic (1901). A study of these demonstrations of radio, with scientists trying to work out how a phenomenon predicted to have a short range could transmit "over the horizon", led to the discovery of a radio reflecting layer in the Earth's atmosphere in 1902, later called the ionosphere . Radiotelegraphy proved effective for rescue work in sea disasters by enabling effective communication between ships and from ship to shore. In 1904, Marconi began

5120-656: The Ericsson AXE , Alcatel E10 and System 12. It was also available on some Ericsson crossbar exchanges, such as the ARE11 which, while electromechanical, was also computerised. Other digital systems such as the UK's System X also supported the service. Switching systems developed in the 1980s such as the German Siemens / Bosch EWSD also had call waiting. In North America, the NANP uses

5248-499: The First Macedonian War . Nothing else that could be described as a true telegraph existed until the 17th century. Possibly the first alphabetic telegraph code in the modern era is due to Franz Kessler who published his work in 1616. Kessler used a lamp placed inside a barrel with a moveable shutter operated by the signaller. The signals were observed at a distance with the newly invented telescope. An optical telegraph

Call waiting - Misplaced Pages Continue

5376-519: The London and Birmingham Railway line's chief engineer. The messages were for the operation of the rope-haulage system for pulling trains up the 1 in 77 bank. The world's first permanent railway telegraph was completed in July 1839 between London Paddington and West Drayton on the Great Western Railway with an electric telegraph using a four-needle system. The concept of a signalling "block" system

5504-520: The Tang dynasty (618–907) a message could be sent 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) in 24 hours. The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) added artillery to the possible signals. While the signalling was complex (for instance, different-coloured flags could be used to indicate enemy strength), only predetermined messages could be sent. The Chinese signalling system extended well beyond the Great Wall. Signal towers away from

5632-455: The *70 star code prefix to suspend call waiting for a dialed call. A stutter dial tone confirms the de-activation. On most European telephone networks, and GSM or UMTS mobile phones, call waiting is activated by dialing the following codes: A voice announcement, tone or a message on your phone's screen will confirm the service status. Call waiting in Europe uses an "R" (recall) button on

5760-465: The 1850s until well into the 20th century, British submarine cable systems dominated the world system. This was set out as a formal strategic goal, which became known as the All Red Line . In 1896, there were thirty cable-laying ships in the world and twenty-four of them were owned by British companies. In 1892, British companies owned and operated two-thirds of the world's cables and by 1923, their share

5888-530: The 1890s saw the discovery and then development of a newly understood phenomenon into a form of wireless telegraphy , called Hertzian wave wireless telegraphy, radiotelegraphy, or (later) simply " radio ". Between 1886 and 1888, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz published the results of his experiments where he was able to transmit electromagnetic waves (radio waves) through the air, proving James Clerk Maxwell 's 1873 theory of electromagnetic radiation . Many scientists and inventors experimented with this new phenomenon but

6016-541: The 1920s. In 1923, construction began on the second factory located in Kearny, New Jersey . The location was known as Kearny Works and in 1925 began telephone cable production. On June 15, 1928, Western Electric employees, photographed by Rosenfeld and Sons, were pictured, in a groundbreaking ceremony , for their expansion of the Kearny Works manufacturing facility at 110 Central Ave, Kearny, New Jersey. Kearny Works would achieve

6144-525: The British government followed—by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 km ( 3 + 1 ⁄ 2  mi) across Salisbury Plain . On 13 May 1897, Marconi, assisted by George Kemp, a Cardiff Post Office engineer, transmitted the first wireless signals over water to Lavernock (near Penarth in Wales) from Flat Holm . His star rising, he was soon sending signals across

6272-462: The Morse system connected Baltimore to Washington , and by 1861 the west coast of the continent was connected to the east coast. The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph , in a series of improvements, also ended up with a one-wire system, but still using their own code and needle displays . The electric telegraph quickly became a means of more general communication. The Morse system was officially adopted as

6400-661: The United States by Samuel Morse . The electric telegraph was slower to develop in France due to the established optical telegraph system, but an electrical telegraph was put into use with a code compatible with the Chappe optical telegraph. The Morse system was adopted as the international standard in 1865, using a modified Morse code developed in Germany in 1848. The heliograph is a telegraph system using reflected sunlight for signalling. It

6528-459: The Western Electric brand. Early on, Western Electric also managed an electrical equipment distribution business, furnishing its customers with non-telephone products made by other manufacturers This electrical distribution business was spun off from Western Electric in 1925 and organized into a separate company, Graybar Electric Company , in honor of the company's founders, Elisha Gray and Enos Barton. Bell Telephone Laboratories , created from

SECTION 50

#1733092565101

6656-404: The closure date. By the time AT&T was dissolved in the early 1980s, more than twenty production plants around the country ("Works" locations) had been established. Telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore

6784-438: The consensus was that these new waves (similar to light) would be just as short range as light, and, therefore, useless for long range communication. At the end of 1894, the young Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi began working on the idea of building a commercial wireless telegraphy system based on the use of Hertzian waves (radio waves), a line of inquiry that he noted other inventors did not seem to be pursuing. Building on

6912-406: The construction of Hawthorne Works first buildings were authorized by Barton. In 1907, the research and development staffs of Western Electric and AT&T were consolidated to 463 West Street, New York. The location served the newly Western Electric Engineering Department for the responsibility of the testing and inspection of its telephones and equipment. AT&T's Engineering Department retained

7040-411: The coordinates of the letter of the alphabet being transmitted. The number of said torches held up signalled the grid square that contained the letter. There is no definite record of the system ever being used, but there are several passages in ancient texts that some think are suggestive. Holzmann and Pehrson, for instance, suggest that Livy is describing its use by Philip V of Macedon in 207 BC during

7168-485: The engineering department of Western Electric in 1925, was half-owned by Western Electric, the other half belonging to AT&T. The company began to increase its presence in other sectors of industry for new products. In September 1931, the Teletype Corporation headquartered in Chicago on Wrightwood Ave, became a subsidiary of Western Electric and it was a manufacturer of teletypewriters for TWX services. There

7296-531: The erroneous belief that there was an electrified atmospheric stratum accessible at low altitude. They thought atmosphere current, connected with a return path using "Earth currents" would allow for wireless telegraphy as well as supply power for the telegraph, doing away with artificial batteries. A more practical demonstration of wireless transmission via conduction came in Amos Dolbear 's 1879 magneto electric telephone that used ground conduction to transmit over

7424-448: The facility jobs started in fall of 1983 and the 59 year old, 3 million-square-foot, 144-acre facility was sold officially on May 21, 1984, with nearly 1000 last employees left at the plant. The former facility was purchased and later existed as warehouses, distribution, research and light manufacturing facilities. As modern facilities around the country were used for the operations of Hawthorne and its productions distributed, announcement

7552-553: The fight against Geronimo and other Apache bands in the Apache Wars . Miles had previously set up the first heliograph line in the US between Fort Keogh and Fort Custer in Montana . He used the heliograph to fill in vast, thinly populated areas that were not covered by the electric telegraph. Twenty-six stations covered an area 320 by 480 km (200 by 300 mi). In a test of the system,

7680-618: The first commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907. Notably, Marconi's apparatus was used to help rescue efforts after the sinking of RMS  Titanic . Britain's postmaster-general summed up, referring to the Titanic disaster, "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi...and his marvellous invention." The successful development of radiotelegraphy

7808-640: The ground without any wires connecting the stations. Other attempts were made to send the electric current through bodies of water, to span rivers, for example. Prominent experimenters along these lines included Samuel F. B. Morse in the United States and James Bowman Lindsay in Great Britain, who in August 1854, was able to demonstrate transmission across a mill dam at a distance of 500 yards (457 metres). US inventors William Henry Ward (1871) and Mahlon Loomis (1872) developed electrical conduction systems based on

SECTION 60

#1733092565101

7936-487: The headquarters in Chicago had moved to a new building on Clinton Street, the New York shop had moved two city blocks to a new building on Greenwich Street, and both Boston and Indianapolis factories closed. The Antwerp location was at the same location under Western Electric operations until sold in 1925 to ITT. In April 1879, the New York shop was located at 62-68 New Church Street, Lower Manhattan, New York. Western Union had

8064-596: The high volume of manufacturing products. The North Carolina Works was located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Merrimack Valley Works location was in North Andover, Massachusetts . The Kansas City Works location was in Lee's Summit, Missouri . A Lawrence, Massachusetts factory opened on November 13, 1951, and was called the "Garfield Shops." The location started with as a wired units job and there were thirteen workers with

8192-419: The ideas of previous scientists and inventors Marconi re-engineered their apparatus by trial and error attempting to build a radio-based wireless telegraphic system that would function the same as wired telegraphy. He would work on the system through 1895 in his lab and then in field tests making improvements to extend its range. After many breakthroughs, including applying the wired telegraphy concept of grounding

8320-538: The internal mechanical and electrical components, which still required paying AT&T a monthly leasing fee. Starting in 1983 with the breakup of the Bell System, Western Electric telephones could be sold to the public under the brand name American Bell, a newly created subsidiary of AT&T. One of the terms of the Modification of Final Judgment in the Bell System divestiture procedures prohibited AT&T from using

8448-444: The issuance of a non-voting preferred class of capital stock, disallowed under the statutes of the state of Illinois. In the Bell System, telephones were leased by the operating companies to subscribers, and remained the property of the Bell System. Service subscribers paid a monthly fee included in the service charge, while paying additionally for special types or features of telephones, such as colored telephone sets. Equipment repair

8576-545: The largest ship of its day, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel . An overland telegraph from Britain to India was first connected in 1866 but was unreliable so a submarine telegraph cable was connected in 1870. Several telegraph companies were combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872. Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable at Darwin . From

8704-567: The largest square foot size of 3,579,000 throughout the years and be the second largest plant for Western Electric manufacturing plants built before the 1930s, only second in size to the Hawthorne Works at Cicero, Illinois . Here is an aerial image of Kearny Works, between 1925 and 1930, held in the Library Company of Philadelphia. with the picture of the entire plant and railways. In 1929, work began at Point Breeze, Baltimore, Maryland as

8832-579: The late 18th century. The system was used extensively in France, and European nations occupied by France, during the Napoleonic era . The electric telegraph started to replace the optical telegraph in the mid-19th century. It was first taken up in Britain in the form of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph , initially used mostly as an aid to railway signalling . This was quickly followed by a different system developed in

8960-421: The line at his own expense and agreed that the railway could have free use of it in exchange for the right to open it up to the public. Most of the early electrical systems required multiple wires (Ronalds' system was an exception), but the system developed in the United States by Morse and Vail was a single-wire system. This was the system that first used the soon-to-become-ubiquitous Morse code . By 1844,

9088-569: The location was at 162 South Water Street in Chicago. On December 31, 1869, he entered a partnership with Barton, and later sold his share to inventor Gray. In 1872, Barton and Gray moved the business to Clinton Street, and incorporated it as the Western Electric Manufacturing Company on the Near West Side of Chicago. They manufactured a variety of electrical products including typewriters, alarms, and lighting and had

9216-517: The method used for transmission. Passing messages by signalling over distance is an ancient practice. One of the oldest examples is the signal towers of the Great Wall of China . In 400 BC , signals could be sent by beacon fires or drum beats . By 200 BC complex flag signalling had developed, and by the Han dynasty (200 BC – 220 AD) signallers had a choice of lights, flags, or gunshots to send signals. By

9344-559: The modern International Morse code) to aid differentiating from the morse dot. Use of the heliograph declined from 1915 onwards, but remained in service in Britain and British Commonwealth countries for some time. Australian forces used the heliograph as late as 1942 in the Western Desert Campaign of World War II . Some form of heliograph was used by the mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989). A teleprinter

9472-546: The name Bell after January 1, 1984; prior to this, AT&T's plan was to market products and services under the American Bell name, accompanied by the now familiar AT&T globe logo. In 1903, Western Electric began construction of the first buildings for Hawthorne Works on the outskirts of Chicago . In 1905, the Clinton Street power apparatus shops moved to Hawthorne. Further expansion of large factories began in

9600-479: The operations for pulp cable relocated to Phoenix Works. A loss of 400 positions were expected eliminated in the process. After the Bell System breakup, Western Electric facilities were known as AT&T Technologies facilities in 1984. The three largest and oldest facilities, Hawthorne Works, Kearny Works, and Baltimore Works were closed shortly after due to "excess space". Western Electric used various logos during its existence. Starting in 1914 it used an image of

9728-467: The phone. This performs a similar function to a North American hook flash button but is much shorter duration, typically 80ms to 100ms, vs. 250ms in North America. In some networks, pressing R toggles between the calls, similar to North America. However, in most countries there are further options: Type II Caller ID also works with call waiting. Since the waiting call uses a zip tone (for example,

9856-399: The possible messages. One of the few for which details are known is a system invented by Aeneas Tacticus (4th century BC). Tacticus's system had water filled pots at the two signal stations which were drained in synchronisation. Annotation on a floating scale indicated which message was being sent or received. Signals sent by means of torches indicated when to start and stop draining to keep

9984-602: The reduced production of home telephones because of the war, began to have a backlog of two million orders in late 1945 for the Hawthorne plant. Western Electric had acquired a former Studebaker plant on Archer Avenue (Chicago, Illinois) for assemblers that produced out one hundred thousand Model 302s telephones by March 1946. After World War II, the National Carbon Company left a facility that had manufactured United States Navy submarine batteries and underwater detonators in Winston-Salem. This facility at 800 Chatham Road,

10112-453: The responsibility for the growth of the Bell System with compatible equipment and service. Gradually the consolidation improved and advanced the telephony response to expanding use. On July 24, 1915, employees of the Hawthorne Works boarded the SS Eastland in downtown Chicago for a company picnic. The ship rolled over at the dock and over 800 people died. In 1920, Alice Heacock Seidel

10240-419: The same run of tape. The advantage of doing this is that messages can be sent at a steady, fast rate making maximum use of the available telegraph lines. The economic advantage of doing this is greatest on long, busy routes where the cost of the extra step of preparing the tape is outweighed by the cost of providing more telegraph lines. The first machine to use punched tape was Bain's teleprinter (Bain, 1843), but

10368-508: The services of call waiting with caller ID but also introduces an "options" feature that, in conjunction with certain screen-based telephones, or other capable equipment, gives a telephone user the option to: Western Electric Western Electric Co., Inc. was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company that operated from 1869 to 1996. A subsidiary of the AT&;T Corporation for most of its lifespan, Western Electric

10496-403: The speed of recording ( Bain , 1846), but was delayed by a patent challenge from Morse. The first true printing telegraph (that is printing in plain text) used a spinning wheel of types in the manner of a daisy wheel printer ( House , 1846, improved by Hughes , 1855). The system was adopted by Western Union . Early teleprinters used the Baudot code , a five-bit sequential binary code. This

10624-568: The standard for continental European telegraphy in 1851 with a revised code, which later became the basis of International Morse Code . However, Great Britain and the British Empire continued to use the Cooke and Wheatstone system, in some places as late as the 1930s. Likewise, the United States continued to use American Morse code internally, requiring translation operators skilled in both codes for international messages. Railway signal telegraphy

10752-462: The synchronisation. None of the signalling systems discussed above are true telegraphs in the sense of a system that can transmit arbitrary messages over arbitrary distances. Lines of signalling relay stations can send messages to any required distance, but all these systems are limited to one extent or another in the range of messages that they can send. A system like flag semaphore , with an alphabetic code, can certainly send any given message, but

10880-554: The system is designed for short-range communication between two persons. An engine order telegraph , used to send instructions from the bridge of a ship to the engine room, fails to meet both criteria; it has a limited distance and very simple message set. There was only one ancient signalling system described that does meet these criteria. That was a system using the Polybius square to encode an alphabet. Polybius (2nd century BC) suggested using two successive groups of torches to identify

11008-602: The system saw only limited use. Later versions of Bain's system achieved speeds up to 1000 words per minute, far faster than a human operator could achieve. The first widely used system (Wheatstone, 1858) was first put into service with the British General Post Office in 1867. A novel feature of the Wheatstone system was the use of bipolar encoding . That is, both positive and negative polarity voltages were used. Bipolar encoding has several advantages, one of which

11136-405: The telegraph into decline from 1920 onwards. The few remaining telegraph applications were largely taken over by alternatives on the internet towards the end of the 20th century. The word telegraph (from Ancient Greek : τῆλε ( têle ) 'at a distance' and γράφειν ( gráphein ) 'to write') was coined by the French inventor of the semaphore telegraph , Claude Chappe , who also coined

11264-417: The telephone market and Bell acquiring Western Electric in 1881. This purchase was a crucial step in standardizing telephone instruments and concentrating manufacturing in a single entity. In the company's first few years as Western Electric, there were five manufacturing locations located at Chicago (220-232 Kinzie St.) New York, Boston, Indianapolis and Antwerp, Belgium. The locations were not permanent, as

11392-459: The third manufacturing location, Baltimore Works, began its occupancy by 1930 for various cable and wire production. Two manufacturing plants in Lincoln, Nebraska were leased in 1943 to Western Electric to manufacture signal corps equipment and later production demands from Hawthorne Works. The Eighth Street building, known as "Lincoln Shops," and the 13th Street building were the locations, the latter

11520-539: The three oldest manufacturing facilities for product manufacturing transfers and employee expected layoffs. The Kearny Works facility that made systems to convert commercial power to run various telecom equipment, would transfer remaining work to Dallas Works. The shutdown of the plant would eliminate 4,000 jobs. The Baltimore Works facility that made connectors and protectors for wire and cable had work moved to Omaha Works. A total of 2,300 jobs were potentially eliminated after that announcement. The Hawthorne Works facility, had

11648-523: The transmitter and receiver, Marconi was able, by early 1896, to transmit radio far beyond the short ranges that had been predicted. Having failed to interest the Italian government, the 22-year-old inventor brought his telegraphy system to Britain in 1896 and met William Preece , a Welshman, who was a major figure in the field and Chief Engineer of the General Post Office . A series of demonstrations for

11776-445: The two stations to form a complete electrical circuit or "loop". In 1837, however, Carl August von Steinheil of Munich , Germany , found that by connecting one leg of the apparatus at each station to metal plates buried in the ground, he could eliminate one wire and use a single wire for telegraphic communication. This led to speculation that it might be possible to eliminate both wires and therefore transmit telegraph signals through

11904-519: The variety of new designs introduced into the market place. This led Western Electric to pursue extreme reliability and durability in design to minimize service calls. In particular, the work of Walter A. Shewhart , who developed new techniques for statistical quality control in the 1920s, helped lead to the quality of manufacture of Western Electric telephones. AT&T also strictly enforced policies against using telephone equipment by other manufacturers on their network. A customer who insisted on using

12032-488: The wall were used to give early warning of an attack. Others were built even further out as part of the protection of trade routes, especially the Silk Road . Signal fires were widely used in Europe and elsewhere for military purposes. The Roman army made frequent use of them, as did their enemies, and the remains of some of the stations still exist. Few details have been recorded of European/Mediterranean signalling systems and

12160-463: The word semaphore . A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy. The word telegraph alone generally refers to an electrical telegraph . Wireless telegraphy is transmission of messages over radio with telegraphic codes. Contrary to the extensive definition used by Chappe, Morse argued that the term telegraph can strictly be applied only to systems that transmit and record messages at

12288-481: Was a telegraph code developed for use on the French telegraph using a five-key keyboard ( Baudot , 1874). Teleprinters generated the same code from a full alphanumeric keyboard. A feature of the Baudot code, and subsequent telegraph codes, was that, unlike Morse code, every character has a code of the same length making it more machine friendly. The Baudot code was used on the earliest ticker tape machines ( Calahan , 1867),

12416-638: Was agreed on September 3, 1974, with employees at 13 plants returning to work. Only the company's subsidiary Teletype Corporation plant in Little Rock, Arkansas and two plants, the Columbia River Switching Equipment factory in Vancouver, Washington and in San Ramon, California were subject to ratification or in negotiations to settle local agreements. In 1983, corporate announcements were made at

12544-539: Was an inventor sourcing parts and models for experiments. That inventor was Elisha Gray , a former physics professor at Oberlin College . Barton thought of future growth in electrical apparatus potential for the company and shared a common enthusiasm with the inventor, who was interested in leading a manufacturing plant capable of long-term developments. Shawk found those plans were beyond his business goals and offered to sell his half-interest partnership to Gray. Anson Stager ,

12672-469: Was appointed Ingénieur-Télégraphiste and charged with establishing a line of stations between Paris and Lille , a distance of 230 kilometres (140 mi). It was used to carry dispatches for the war between France and Austria. In 1794, it brought news of a French capture of Condé-sur-l'Escaut from the Austrians less than an hour after it occurred. A decision to replace the system with an electric telegraph

12800-688: Was called "Buffalo Plant." A satellite shop was established in Jersey City, New Jersey called "Marion Shops" and occupied in 1947. This location produced portable test sets, rectifiers, and power equipment for the main plant known as the Kearny Works. In July 1948, the equipment plant at Duluth, Minnesota was involved in the National Labors Act with bargaining units of IAM and IBEW. After 1947, eight Works locations were built and occupied by 1961 at Allentown, Indianapolis, North Carolina, Merrimack Valley, Omaha, Columbus, Oklahoma City, and Kansas City for

12928-414: Was demonstrated on the London and Birmingham Railway in July of the same year. In July 1839, a five-needle, five-wire system was installed to provide signalling over a record distance of 21 km on a section of the Great Western Railway between London Paddington station and West Drayton. However, in trying to get railway companies to take up his telegraph more widely for railway signalling , Cooke

13056-421: Was developed in Britain from the 1840s onward. It was used to manage railway traffic and to prevent accidents as part of the railway signalling system. On 12 June 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone were awarded a patent for an electric telegraph. This was demonstrated between Euston railway station —where Wheatstone was located—and the engine house at Camden Town—where Cooke was stationed, together with Robert Stephenson ,

13184-598: Was done in 1884 to Chicago and New York factories by Charles Williams becoming a Western Electric Manager. In 1888–1889, Western Electric built a 10-story factory building at 125 Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan, to manufacture some of the first telephones. The New York shop that was renting the Western Union building moved to this building. In preparation for the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1892, Western Electric

13312-592: Was expanding beyond making telephone equipment and American Bell noticed its division from a manufacturing business to a supply business. Western Electric decided to split in 1921, the supply department from the manufacturing business and this led later to a separate entity. In 1925, ITT purchased the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company of Brussels, Belgium, and other worldwide subsidiaries from AT&T, to avoid an antitrust action. The company manufactured rotary system switching equipment under

13440-554: Was forced by a lawsuit to sell back to Milo Kellogg. The Manufacturers Junction Railway Company was incorporated in January 1903 to provide rail connections to major railroad systems. There were approximately 13 miles of track in and out of Hawthorne Works for rail freight of inbound materials and outbound finished products. Western Electric had a tenure of 50 years up to 1952, in the responsibility and operation of its use for Hawthorne and other nearby industrial companies. Also, in 1903,

13568-576: Was included in the fees. This system had the effect of subsidizing basic telephone service, keeping local telephone service inexpensive, under $ 10 per month. After divestiture, basic service prices increased, and customers became responsible for inside building wiring and telephone equipment. The Bell System had an extensive policy and infrastructure to recycle or refurbish equipment taken out of service, replacing all defective, weak, or otherwise unusable parts for new installations. This resulted in extraordinary longevity of Western Electric telephones, and limited

13696-540: Was invented by Claude Chappe and operated in France from 1793. The two most extensive systems were Chappe's in France, with branches into neighbouring countries, and the system of Abraham Niclas Edelcrantz in Sweden. During 1790–1795, at the height of the French Revolution , France needed a swift and reliable communication system to thwart the war efforts of its enemies. In 1790, the Chappe brothers set about devising

13824-462: Was invented by US Army surgeon Albert J. Myer in the 1850s who later became the first head of the Signal Corps . Wigwag was used extensively during the American Civil War where it filled a gap left by the electrical telegraph. Although the electrical telegraph had been in use for more than a decade, the network did not yet reach everywhere and portable, ruggedized equipment suitable for military use

13952-403: Was known as a telegram. A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable, often shortened to "cable" or "wire". The suffix -gram is derived from ancient Greek: γραμμα ( gramma ), meaning something written, i.e. telegram means something written at a distance and cablegram means something written via a cable, whereas telegraph implies the process of writing at a distance. Later,

14080-597: Was located in Montgomery, Illinois, it reported and supported production of the main plant, Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois. The Kearny Works facility had satellite shops that were apart from its location but were part of the manufacturing process. Located in Fair Lawn, New Jersey and occupied since 1956, the "Fair Lawn Shops" produced coils, resistors, transformers, and keys under Kearny manufacturing. The Indianapolis Works facility

14208-782: Was made in 1846, but it took a decade before it was fully taken out of service. The fall of Sevastopol was reported by Chappe telegraph in 1855. The Prussian system was put into effect in the 1830s. However, they were highly dependent on good weather and daylight to work and even then could accommodate only about two words per minute. The last commercial semaphore link ceased operation in Sweden in 1880. As of 1895, France still operated coastal commercial semaphore telegraph stations, for ship-to-shore communication. The early ideas for an electric telegraph included in 1753 using electrostatic deflections of pith balls, proposals for electrochemical bubbles in acid by Campillo in 1804 and von Sömmering in 1809. The first experimental system over

14336-590: Was made on June 24, 1983, for closure. Between 1975 and 1983, the Foundry and most of the Telephone Apparatus buildings were demolished and in 1986–1987, the remaining Telephone Apparatus buildings and the Executive Tower were demolished. The Hawthorne facility was in operations for 83 years when it closed its doors in 1986 and torn down for a shopping center. Another building was demolished on April 10, 1994, for

14464-570: Was mainly used in areas where the electrical telegraph had not been established and generally used the same code. The most extensive heliograph network established was in Arizona and New Mexico during the Apache Wars . The heliograph was standard military equipment as late as World War II . Wireless telegraphy developed in the early 20th century became important for maritime use, and was a competitor to electrical telegraphy using submarine telegraph cables in international communications. Telegrams became

14592-400: Was not immediately available. Permanent or semi-permanent stations were established during the war, some of them towers of enormous height and the system was extensive enough to be described as a communications network. A heliograph is a telegraph that transmits messages by flashing sunlight with a mirror, usually using Morse code. The idea for a telegraph of this type was first proposed as

14720-441: Was passed to Western Electric Company and operated until 1966 for production of national telephone companies' switches and circuits. Additionally, the location complex was one of three nationwide Western Electric field engineering sites. The mid-1940s brought occupancy to locations. A plant was established in 1946 at Tonawanda, New York to produce equipment wiring cable, telephone cords, enamelled wire, and insulated wire. This plant

14848-455: Was preceded by a 50-year history of ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful experiments by inventors to achieve wireless telegraphy by other means. Several wireless electrical signaling schemes based on the (sometimes erroneous) idea that electric currents could be conducted long-range through water, ground, and air were investigated for telegraphy before practical radio systems became available. The original telegraph lines used two wires between

14976-477: Was producing telephone sets and components with a satellite shop. The Indianapolis shop known as "Washington Street Shop" produced miscellaneous subscriber apparatus since its occupancy in 1957. The "Lawrence Shop" that was occupied in 1957 produced BELLBoy receivers, telephone repeaters and carrier products under Merrimack Valley Works. The "Clark Shop" was occupied in 1959 at Clark, New Jersey and manufactured submarine cable repeaters and components. The satellite shop

15104-433: Was proposed by Cooke in 1842. Railway signal telegraphy did not change in essence from Cooke's initial concept for more than a century. In this system each line of railway was divided into sections or blocks of varying length. Entry to and exit from the block was to be authorised by electric telegraph and signalled by the line-side semaphore signals, so that only a single train could occupy the rails. In Cooke's original system,

15232-542: Was rejected several times in favour of the more familiar, but shorter range, steam-powered pneumatic signalling. Even when his telegraph was taken up, it was considered experimental and the company backed out of a plan to finance extending the telegraph line out to Slough . However, this led to a breakthrough for the electric telegraph, as up to this point the Great Western had insisted on exclusive use and refused Cooke permission to open public telegraph offices. Cooke extended

15360-419: Was responsible for the organized Bell System sales activities and merchandising of apparatus for the 900 long-distance circuit from New York to Chicago. In 1897, the building at 463 West Street, New York was constructed and housed the New York shop as well as the company Eastern headquarters. Western Electric was the first company to join in a Japanese joint venture with foreign capital. In 1899, it invested in

15488-482: Was sold in 1950 for $ 500,000 to Western Electric. The plants were closed after the Omaha Works opened in 1958. Western Electric acquired in 1943, the old Grad and Winchell buildings located at Haverhill, Massachusetts. New Jersey supervisors taught former textile and shoe workers the manufacturing process of coil winding. The employees' acquired skills demonstrated their versatility in this new manufacturing process for

15616-496: Was still 42.7 percent. During World War I , Britain's telegraph communications were almost completely uninterrupted while it was able to quickly cut Germany's cables worldwide. In 1843, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain invented a device that could be considered the first facsimile machine . He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires. Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain's design and demonstrated

15744-404: Was still used, although it was accepted that poor weather ruled it out on many days of the year. France had an extensive optical telegraph system dating from Napoleonic times and was even slower to take up electrical systems. Eventually, electrostatic telegraphs were abandoned in favour of electromagnetic systems. An early experimental system ( Schilling , 1832) led to a proposal to establish

15872-813: Was the acquisition in 1931 of the Nassau Smelting and Refining plant located in Totenville, Staten Island, New York to recycle Bell System scrap wire, metal, and becoming a subsidiary of Western Electric. The acquisition of the Queensboro factory in Middle Village, New York became a Western Electric Shop in the 1930s to produce wooden telephone booths. In 1974, the IBEW members at Western Electric's 16 plants went on strike over improved benefits, cost‐of‐living adjustments, and pay increase for up to three years. The ratified contract

16000-432: Was the first female Western Electric employee to be given permission to stay on after she had married. This set a precedent in the company, which previously had not allowed married women in their employ. Miss Heacock had worked for Western Electric for sixteen years before her marriage, and was at the time the highest-paid secretary in the company. In her memoirs, she wrote that the decision to allow her to stay on "required

16128-500: Was the primary manufacturer, supplier, and purchasing agent for all telephone equipment for the Bell System from 1881 until 1984, when the Bell System was dismantled . Because the Bell System had a near-total monopoly over telephone service in the United States for much of the 20th century, Western Electric's equipment was widespread across the country. The company was responsible for many technological innovations, as well as developments in industrial management. In 1856, George Shawk,

16256-480: Was under Kearny Works. The 1960s and 1970s had various new facilities built and occupied by Western Electric to produce new technologies such as electronic switching equipment (Dallas and North Illinois), fiber optic cable networks (Atlanta), power systems (Phoenix), business equipment (Denver), and telephone equipment (Shreveport). In 1970, Western Electric purchased land in Bishop Ranch, San Ramon, California for

16384-473: Was used by British military in many colonial wars, including the Anglo-Zulu War (1879). At some point, a morse key was added to the apparatus to give the operator the same degree of control as in the electric telegraph. Another type of heliograph was the heliostat or heliotrope fitted with a Colomb shutter. The heliostat was essentially a surveying instrument with a fixed mirror and so could not transmit

#100899