1960-1961

From CSI Wiki Farm

• 1960
  • AT&T Long Lines makes filing with FCC to result in a net decrease in interstate telephone revenues of $3 million annually. A special feature of this filing was a new system for measuring distances to determine rates. The new method - called VH - is based on the use of vertical and horizontal coordinates, permitting a more accurate calculation of distances.
  • There are now 3299 telephone companies.
  • Bell Laboratories installs the world's first telephone exchange based on a stored program computer, in Morris, Illinois, USA. Customer trials begin of the world's first electronic telephone central office in Morris, Illinois.
  • May 16, American physicist Theodore Maiman demonstrates the generation of a pulse of coherent red light by means of a solid ruby, the first laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu. The idea, however, dates back to the days of Albert Einstein.
  • The first STD call in India introduced between Kanpur and Lucknow.
  • Echo, the first passive communication satellite is launched. John Robinson Pierce, the man behind the project, feels that future of communication lies in satellites.
  • 10,000 Swedish vehicles have communication radios mounted.
  • A major breakthrough for the telephone industry occurred when Bell Laboratories carefully characterized the reflections and echoes from a wide range of telephone line channels, and developed statistical models and sensing techniques that could be used in echo-canceling equipment. From accurate models of the channel, it became possible to invent the equalizer, a signal-processing device that in the early 1960s undid the echoes, and thus greatly reduced the need for signal shaping amplifiers. The cost savings and quality increase was astounding. Echo-cancellation theory was developed in the early 1960s by AT&T Bell Labs, followed by the introduction of the first echo-cancellation system in the late 1960s by COMSAT TeleSystems (previously a division of COMSAT Laboratories). COMSAT designed the first analog echo canceller systems to demonstrate the feasibility and performance of satellite communications networks. Based on analog processes, these early echo-cancellation systems were implemented across satellite communications networks to demonstrate the network's performance for long-distance, cross-continental
    

    

    Initial Touch Tone Phone
    telephony. These systems were not commercially viable, however, because of their size and manufacturing costs.
  • February 1st sees the formation of a new division of the Pacific Bell Company to be known as Pacific Telephone Northwest and to include Oregon, Washington and the northern part of Idaho.
  • George Goubau at Army Electronics Command Laboratory, Bell Telephone Laboratories and Standard Telecommunication Laboratories begin investigating hollow optical waveguides with regularly spaced lenses
  • On August 3rd, Bell Laboratories scientists carried on a coast-to-coast telephone conversation by "bouncing" their voices off the moon.
  • October 21st, AT&T Long Lines files an application with the FCC seeking approval of a space communications experiment using "active" satellites.
  • November 1st sees the first market trial of Touch Tone calling undertaken in Findlay, Ohio.
  • On November 17th, customer trials begin of the world's first electronic Telephone Central Office in Morris, Illinois.
  • December, Ali Javan makes first helium-neon laser at Bell Labs, the first laser to emit a steady beam.

• 1961
  • Bell System (January 16th) proposed a new service called TELPAK which would create "electronic highways" between specific points, over which many types of communications could be transmitted.
  • On January 18th, the FCC authorizes AT&T to operate experimental radio stations for basic earth-satellite communications study ("Project Telstar").
  • January, Charles C. Eaglesfield proposes hollow optical pipeline made of reflective pipes
  • May, Elias Snitzer of American Optical publishes theoretical description of single-mode fibers.
  • On September 24th, the specially designed cable-laying and repair ship, C.S. Long Lines, is launched at Hamburg, Germany.
  • ESS-1 Announced
  • Bell Telephone Labs release design information for the touch-tone dial to Western Electric.