AT&T Archives: 600 Million Calls A Day

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In 1979, The Bell System was still intact — it wouldn't be broken into different companies for another five years. This film, from one of its regional divisions, profiles the range and reach of AT&T's network at the time. The company supported the service of 138 million telephones through the wired network, and invested 15.8 billion dollars into said network during that year.

The Bell System was increasingly diversifying its methods to deliver not just calls, but information as well. It launched new satellites, tested fiber optic cables, tested the first cellular network, and experimented with electronic information services. The programming language C++ had just been invented, and DARPA had just selected the Bell System's UNIX language to unify the then-internet's operating systems.

This Bell System annual report from 1979 (http://www.porticus.org/bell/att/1979...) has a neat construct running through it: AT&T had over one million employees, and it used computers to randomly choose 100 of them to profile within the pages of the annual report. While not a scientific sample, it's a neat cross-section of the divisions and services offered at the time, but given personal weight through those working within the Bell System.

Jump ahead 32 years to AT&T's 2011 annual report. Even though AT&T's business model differed from 1979, investment for 2011 was $115 billion, and 103 million wireless subscribers were served by the AT&T network. Even more significantly, since 2006, AT&T had invested more capital into the U.S. economy than any other public company*. (*direct quote from report)

Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ