Episode 135 - The Telephone

I’m David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

We’ve been looking at the historical progression from craft manufacturing to mass manufacturing and ultimately to lean manufacturing, and drawing connections to a variety of technology - and demand - issues that forced so many of these decisions.

Last time, we discussed the telegraph and the birth of Western Union.  Today, I want to share some discoveries about the telephone and the founding and growth of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.  Within that story, we want to discover the birth and contributions of Bell Labs for research and development of new technologies, and Western Electric for the manufacturing of those new products and innovation in manufacturing processes.

Western Electric grew from a small shop in Cleveland, first acquired in 1856 by George Shawk to produce telegraph parts.  He partnered with Enos Barton, then sold his own shares to Elisha Gray around 1870.  Elisha Gray was working on a technology to transmit voices over telegraph wires.  Gray and Barton moved the business to Chicago in 1872 and incorporated under the name of Western Electric Manufacturing Company.

Alexander Graham Bell gets credit for inventing the telephone, making it work in 1876 with the now famous line “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”  This was three days after his patent was issued on March 7, 1876 despite a caveat being filed in the Patent Office by Elisha Gray in 1875, the same year Gray sold his rights to Western Electric to Western Union.

During the summer of 1876, Bell and Watson demonstrated the telephone to the rest of the world at the Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, alongside dozens of inventions that demonstrated the value of mass production.

Bell’s work had been funded by Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the fathers of two pupils from his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston, where he taught deaf and mute children how to communicate.  Incidentally, one of his other students in 1872 was Helen Keller.

After Western Union refused to accept their offer to sell the telephone patent for $100,000, Sanders, Hubbard, and Bell incorporated the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.  In 1881, Bell Telephone Company acquired Western Electric and by 1886, over 150,000 telephones were in service.

As with every other invention of this magnitude, there were hundreds of claims contesting Bell’s patent, many from Western Union.  None was able to withstand the evidence and vigor brought by Bell Telephone, however, so the company continued to grow.

As lines expanded across the country, Bell’s management formed a new company to handle long distance, naming the company the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885.  In 1899, in response to restrictive laws, the assets of Bell’s companies were consolidated under the AT&T banner, creating a monopoly called Bell System, affectionately known as Ma Bell.  

In 1905, they opened a new manufacturing facility in Cicero, Illinois and named it after the original name of the town - Hawthorne.  The Hawthorne Works became one of the largest single-site employers in the country, with over 45,000 employees at its heyday.  It also hosted dozens, if not hundreds of innovative studies in manufacturing processes and socio-technical systems, including the studies surrounding the famed Hawthorne Effect, which we’ll get to a little later.

More to follow!  I hope you stay with me as I try to keep up with these.  If you’d like to know more about how I use these history lessons to make practical improvements in today’s technology driven companies, book a call with me and let’s have a chat.  I’d be happy to hear about some of the problems you’re experiencing and how we might work together toward effective solutions.

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow. 

134 - Communication Revolutions

I'm David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

I intended to share some thoughts about the birth of aviation today, but I didn't want to neglect a very important late 19th century set of developments that rapidly accelerated the growth of the economy of the United States and fed a second industrial revolution that further enabled the success of Henry Ford and other automobile manufacturers at the dawn of the 20th century.

I hear a lot of talk today of disruptive technology.  But every useful technology has its own ability to disrupt the lives of people everywhere.  The one I want to focus on today is the telegraph.

Most of us are familiar with the name Samuel F. B. Morse.  He is the inventor of a particularly successful type of telegraph machine.  What's strange, though, is that up to this point in his life, he was an accomplished artist, having painted several portraits of prominent people in American history such as John Adams and the Marquis de LaFayette.

The story is interesting.  Apparently, while away from his Connecticut home, Morse received word, presumably through the Post Office, that his wife was gravely ill.  He immediately left to return home only to arrive well after his wife's death and burial.  The delay in receiving the message became a burning interest for him.

On a ship returning from Europe in 1832, Morse met Charles T. Jackson and shared conversations about electromagnetism and wire transmission signals.  From this encounter, Morse had the idea of the single-wire telegraph and got busy trying to make it work.  

Over the following few years, several inventors in Europe were developing telegraph machines and trying to figure out how to transmit signals over longer distances.  In 1837, working with Leonard Gale (a chemistry professor) and Alfred Vail (a wealthy and enthusiastic young man), Morse was finally able to array the right switches and relays to transmit a signal further than ten miles.

On January 11, 1838, they made their first public demonstration of the telegraph at the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey to a small and mostly local crowd.  

Morse went to Washington DC  to try to get federal funding of a larger telegraph line, but it wasn't until 1843 that Congress granted funding of $30,000 to build a telegraph line from DC to Baltimore, Maryland, about 38 miles along the right-of-way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad - What Monopoly game fans will recognize as the B&O Railroad. 

On May 1, 1844, the first impressive demonstration occurred when the results of the Whig Party Convention in Baltimore were transmitted to the US Capitol.  Henry Clay was their nominee for president.  

The Official opening of the line was on May 24, 1844 when, in the presence of VIPs, Morse transmitted the words "What hath God wrought" from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the US Capitol building to the B&O's Mount Clare Station in Baltimore.

Morse received a patent in 1840 for the electric telegraph, and a second patent in 1846 for local circuits, but these were aggressively contested by several parties, despite being renewed in 1848.  It wasn't until a supreme court case - O'reilly v. Morse in 1853 that definitively identified Morse as the inventor granting full royalties and license fees owed in the interval...a sum of almost $2 million dollars.

Over 20 companies raced to string telegraph cable across the northeastern US and further west.  In 1852, the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company began consolidating these companies and in 1856, acquired the bankrupt New York and Western Union Telegraph Company and created the new and current Western Union Telegraph Company.

By the end of 1861, telegraph wires ran from coast to coast and rendered obsolete the 5-year-old Pony Express (from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California) the US Postal Service had established.

About 15 years later, Western Union was offered a new technology for sale by a young inventor, but refused, leaving the rights to the Telephone to what would become the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, or AT&T.  More on the telephone tomorrow!

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.