I certainly remember Ma Bell. She was the company everyone loved to hate. She suffered from a multiple-personality disorder of sorts, with each state or region of the country having its own “Baby Bell” — New England Telephone in most of the New England states, for example, or Bell of Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania, and each was answerable to the states’ departments of public utilities in each state in which operated. Because of that, rates for comparable service varied from one part of the country to the other — a pay phone call that was five cents in Louisiana was ten cents in Arkansas, Massachusetts, or New York, and 20-25 cents most other places, for example. You paid a rate (that varied, based on geography) every month to rent the telephone instrument — only a dollar or two a month — and, in the unlikely event it ever wore out, you would get a new one. If you made a long distance call and wanted to talk at length, you knew to wait until “night rates” went into effect — 11 pm, all day Saturday, and Sunday before 5 pm.
In exchange for this, we received service that was consistently reliable, and universally available across the vast geography of this country.
Behind this was the Bell System, formally known as AT&T, which also owned a manufacturing unit (Western Electric) that made all those phones and other phone system components that were built like tanks, a division that connected all the Baby Bells and other local telephone companies (Long Lines), and a research and development unit, Bell Labs.
The Idea Factory is about Bell Labs, of course, but in telling its story, it gives us a bit of the history of telephone service in the United States. The first phones, for example, did not have ringers — once the call was connected, you had to yell “Ahoy!” multiple times until you could get the called party’s attention or you just gave up.
Bell Labs invented several things we take (or, at one time, took) for granted: vacuum tubes, transistors, lasers, telecommunication satellites, to name a few. And because the Bell System was a regulated monopoly, with a guaranteed rate of return, and, because of continual threats of antitrust suits, the Labs help justify keeping the system together by making discoveries for the greater good, and licensing them to others for a nominal fee, they were able to spend their time dreaming and thinking big — something that would be difficult to justify with today’s investor myopia.
Gertner spends perhaps a little too much time talking about the childhood and personality quirks of some of the key players, but I found the book fascinating to read. Several reviews were published about it, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Business Week, and an author interview on NPR’s On Point.
The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner (Penguin Press, 2012)
