1911-1915

From CSI Wiki Farm

• 1911
  • The Bell System announces plans to consolidate its associated operating companies into state-wide or territorial units; the beginning of the pre-Divestiture
    

    

    A Western Electric’s three horse truck at Pittsburgh, PA with a load of distributing wire (1913)
    (1984) setup of operating companies. November 2nd marks the organization meeting of the Telephone Pioneers of America at the Hotel Somerset in Boston. Alexander Graham Bell and 246 members are present at the first meeting.
  • Swedish governmental telegraph administration (Telegrafverket) opens their own coastal radio telegraphy station in Gothenburg.
  • A note says that the word "wireless" is losing ground in the USA this year, becoming replaced by "radio telegraphy".
  • American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) takes control of Western Union Telegraph Company.
  • June 16, Charles Flint, an investment banker and trust builder, combined Tabulating Machine Co., International Time Recording Co. and Computing Scale Co. into C-T-R Co. (Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co.) as a trust. C-T-R Co. eventually became IBM. (source: Dean Billing, 11-Feb-2000)

• 1912

• • The United Kingdom's first public automatic telephone exchange opens in Epsom, Surrey (England).
  • Austin presents an empiric formula for the correspondance between wavelength and transmission distance over seas (including reflexion in the Heaviside layer, cf 1902, 1919). The formula is revised at the breakthrough in shortwave radio in 1923.
  • Marconi invents a new way to generate a continuous wave, known as the Multiple Spark System.
  • Gotthilf A. Betulander and Nils Palmgren, Sweden, invent the link coupling principle (länkkopplingsprincipen). This is a relay-based design that reduces the cost for designing telephone exchanges. (what?)
  • August 13, the 62nd U.S. Congress approves Public Law No. 264, "An Act to regulate radio communication", a.k.a. the Radio Act of 1912, mandating that radio stations must be manned 24 hours a day.
  • April 14, Titanic sinks after hitting an iceberg. Marconi wireless equipment on board calls help, reducing the loss in life. As Lord Samuel, British Postmaster General at the time, stated: "Those who have been saved have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi and his wonderful invention."
  • February 22, NCR (National Cash Registers) is the first company ever prosecuted under the new United States antitrust laws. Among the top executives is Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM, who had been an NCR employee since 1895.

• 1913

• • December 13th, AT&T commits to the Attorney General to dispose of its telegraph stock, provide long distance connection to Independent telephone systems and not to purchase any more Independent telephone companies except as approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission. This letter from AT&T to the Attorney General of the U.S. is referred to as the "Kingsbury Commitment". Mr. Kingsbury was an AT&T vice president.
  • In Berlin, Germany, the company "Hochfrequenz-Maschinen-A.-G. für drahtlose Telegraphie" is building radio telegraph stations with 250 meter high antenna towers for the line Germany--USA.
  • Thomas Edison invents talking motion pictures.
  • Edouard Belin invents the portable facsimile machine (fax) which he calls Belinograph and is capable of using ordinary telephone lines.
  • The "Wheatstone-Creed" system for automated telegraphy is introduced in Sweden. It used punched paper tape for transmission and reception, and the received paper tape could be taken to a printer for automated printing.
  • The first practical electrical amplifiers, devised at AT&T make transcontinental telephony possible. (cf 1915)
  • Meissner and Edwin H. Armstrong (born December 18, 1890, died February 1, 1954) introduce the three electrode tube (cf 1907) in field radio transmitters for amplification, detection, and wave generation. This is much used during World War I.
  • J. N. Reynolds, USA, makes an early design of a coordinate selector for telephone exchanges. Previous designs used relays.
  • Formation of Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd. (AWA) by merger of Marconi's and Telefunken's businesses in Australia.
  • The third and final volume is published of a landmark work on mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics:

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Principia Mathematica, 3 volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1910-1913

• • Canada's Radiotelegraph Act.
  • This year, the Eastern Telegraph Company transmits 64 million words by telegraph.

• 1914
  • AT&T sells its holdings of Western Union Telegraph Company stock to comply with the "Kingsbury Commitment".
  • On June 17th, the last pole of the transcontinental telephone line placed at Wendover, Utah on the Nevada, Utah state line.
  • Underground cables link Boston, NYC and Washington.
  • Ericsson installs the world's biggest ever manual telephone exchange in Moscow, having 60,000 subscriber lines.
  • Belin's portable fax machine is used to send the first remote photo news story from the World War I over the telephone lines.
  • AT&T sells its holdings of Western Union Telegraph Company stock to comply with the Kingsbury Commitment. (cf 1913)
  • International Western Electric Company, a subsidiary of AT&T (cf 1925), has locations in Antwerp, London, Berlin, Milan, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Budapest, Tokyo, Montreal, Buenos Aires, and Sydney.
  • The Baltic Exhibition is held in Malmö, Sweden, attracting exhibitors from the Scandinavian countries and Germany. World War I breaks out two months before the opening of the ambitiously planned exhibition.
  • Marconi installs radio telegraph stations at various points around the British Empire, including Singapore.
  • October, formed after Hiram Percy Maxim's ideas (cf January), the newly founded American Radio Relay League (A.R.R.L.) publishes its' first callbook, listing some 400 stations in 33 states and Canada.
  • May 4, Thomas J. Watson, earlier fired from NCR, takes over as General Manager of C-T-R. IBM has traditionally recognized this date as its anniversary.
  • January, Hiram Percy Maxim calls to order the first meeting of the Radio Club of Hartford with some 23 members in attendance. By March the attendance has grown to 35 members. It was then that Maxim had the idea that messages could be relayed over great distances. In order to accomplish this, a network would have to be set up across the country.

• 1915
  • The "Panama California Exposition" is held in San Diego, California.
  • The "Panama Pacific International Exposition" is held in San Francisco, California.
  • Overhead telephone cable disappears within the city of London and Birmingham with the laying of underground cables.
  • AT&T engineers experimentally transmits the human voice across the Atlantic Ocean via radio. The first transatlantic radiotelephone conversation takes place between Arlington, VA, and Eiffel Tower, Paris.
  • January 25th marks the official ceremonies to open the first transcontinental line from New York to San Francisco.
  • In opening the service, Bell, in New York, repeated his famous first telephone sentence to his assistant, Mr.Watson, who was in San Francisco, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson replied, "If you want me, it will take me almost a week to get there."

• • Vacuum tube amplifiers used the first time in coast-to-coast telco circuits.
  • E.T. Whitaker develops the sampling theorem that forms the basis of today's PCM and TCM technologies.
  • USA transcontinental telephone service begins (NY-San Francisco).
    • Used 2500 tons of 8 gauge copper on 180,000 poles, with loading coils every 8 miles.
    • Three vacuum tube repeaters were initially used (by 1918, that was increased to 8 repeaters).
    • A 3-minute call was $20.70
  • By August, the first trials of transmitting speech across the Atlantic begin.
  • In November, the final incarnation of Western Electric is incorporated under the laws of the State of New York and takes over the business of the Western Electric Company of Illinois.