WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The AT&T Story - Part One 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.880 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:17.720 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.079 a lot of all things tech. It is time for 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:22.720 a classic episode and we are going to have a 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.960 three partner in a series of classics. So this is 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.400 going to be part one of three, and it's all 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:34.200 about A. T and T, a huge company that has 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.080 more than a century worth of history to it. So 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.159 that's why I ended up being a three partner. And 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.360 of course I could easily record another part to this. 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:45.960 Just the amount of stuff that's happened in the past 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:49.040 seven years alone would warrant such a thing, and maybe 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:51.479 I will. But first let's listen back to where it 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.120 all began with the A. T. And T story Part one. 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:57.520 We've had other discussions about other companies that, you know, 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.360 you have to start with like a like the company 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:02.840 appearance General General Electric. You know, you have to go 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.200 back way before General Electric to really talk about the company. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:08.600 So in this case, we have to talk about a man, 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:14.200 a man who has been credited officially and through other 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.120 sources as the inventor of the telephone although as we 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.800 all know, when it comes to inventions, it's a lot trick. 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:23.120 It's very tricky to narrow it down to a single person. 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:26.960 It takes a research society to make a technology, and 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:28.840 turns out that there are a lot of people who 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.360 are working on things all at the same time, and 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:35.360 sometimes it's just the person who gets the first. In 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:38.240 the case of Alexander Graham Bell, Uh, not that he 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:41.720 didn't work very hard and make great contributions. It's just 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.520 that there were other people doing the same sort of stuff. Right, 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:49.560 So in February, on February eighteen seventy six, that is 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:52.480 when he filed this first pattern yep to a way 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:57.000 to electronically transmit speech by quote causing electrical undulations similar 0:01:57.000 --> 0:01:59.640 informed to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:05.040 voke or other sounds substantially as set forth end quote. Now. Uh, 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:08.840 it's interesting he had already written the patent out earlier 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.919 in January of that year, but there was a peculiar 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:17.040 sort of legal loophole that he had to leap through 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.880 in order for him to get this patent recognized in 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.440 not just the United States, but also the United Kingdom. 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.360 See the UK had a rule that stated if you 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:28.640 wanted to patent something in the UK, it could not 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:33.000 first have been patented anywhere else. So Graham Bell writes 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:35.400 up this patent he wants to get patented. He's ready 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:37.480 to submit it, except that he first has to get 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.320 over to the UK. And uh, guys, who don't know 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:42.799 if you're familiar with this. In eighteen seventy six, there 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.760 were very few options on how to get from say 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:48.440 the United States to England that didn't involve a really 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.320 long journey, right. It was basically swimming a horse right 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.840 across that. Yep, you just hitch a steam of horses 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.000 to a boat and say, giddy up. I mean, we 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.440 didn't really research that part, so we'd be a little inaccurate. 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.960 Make sure you tweet us and let us know. But no, no, 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:07.640 I mean, you know, because a telecommunications were not a 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.359 thing at this point, because he hadn't patented it yet, 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:12.960 all right, So it was it was taken a while, 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:16.120 and so as it turned out, that very same day, 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:20.200 another electrician began the filing process. I don't think actually 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.680 filed what he what he did. We're talking about Elisha 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:25.720 Gray and Elishah Gray or or We'll just call him 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.080 Gray because first of all, I assume it's Elisha. I 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.040 did not look up at the pronunciation of his first name. 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:34.320 But Mr Gray had submitted a preliminary application for a 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:38.400 similar apparatus. It was also called a caveat. That was 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:42.120 the technical name for the preliminary application. He submitted a 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:46.440 caveat for consideration for a patent the very same day 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.920 that Graham Bell posted it filed his pen or technically 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:52.280 Bell's lawyer filed the pattern right here in the United 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.440 States we're talking about, yes, exactly. So Gray applied for 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.560 a pattern with a very similar idea, and the story 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:01.640 go and I don't know the truth of this, And 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:06.200 in fact, I have proposed to Lauren, not romantically, I 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:09.120 mean an episode title. I've proposed to her that we 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:13.480 actually cover the content the topic of Alexander Graham Bell 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:18.360 and Elisha Gray, because the story about who got that 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.480 patent is really interesting and I think could merit its 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:25.520 own episode at any rate. Uh. The story is that 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:30.839 Bell's lawyer got a look at Gray's application, which included 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:35.680 an element that was not in Bell's work. But then 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.960 when the patent was filed, there was a little scroll 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:43.120 in the margin that covered the same idea. So the 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:46.960 story is that Bell's lawyer, or perhaps Bell himself, It 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:51.000 all depends upon the account you read, lifted an idea 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:55.680 directly from Gray's work in order to essentially beat him tempt. 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.480 So Bell's patent application goes in ahead of raise, and 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.480 so Bell is at least initially awarded the patent, although 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:10.200 it was not uncontested. There was actually quite a vigorous 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.600 battle in the legal system of that was gone for 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:17.719 a few years. And so moving ahead on in that 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:21.000 same year March tenth, eighteen seventy six, and remember he's 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:23.600 already filed the patent, But it was only on March tenth, 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:27.520 eighteen seventy six that we had the famous message from 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.239 Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant Thomas Watson. Mr Watson 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.440 being in another room in the same building. Yeah, and 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.560 and he heard it over this device what would what 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:41.120 would become the telephone, and the message, of course was 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.360 Mr Watson, come here, I want you. And it turns 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.479 out that Corey to the story, Alexander Graham Bell had 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.360 acidentally spilled some acid and needed Thomas Watson to come 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.480 over and help him clean it up before it did 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:58.279 any damage to the surroundings. So not only was March tenth, 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:01.000 eighteen seventy six the first phone call, it was the 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:07.320 first emergency phone call. So yeah, that's a fun little 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:10.400 little side note about this. And we are leading up 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.400 to the company, but we have to lay this groundwork. Yeah, 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.600 and I find all of this pretty fascinating overall. So, 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:20.400 so on October eighth of that year, eighty six, they 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:24.360 had the first two way telephone call between Watson and Bell. Now, 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:26.520 before it was a one way thing. You you could 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.840 have a transmitter and receiver essentially. Now there was one 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:32.640 on either side. You could actually have this communication. And 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.599 this is where Bell introduced his idea of what the 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:41.039 perfect telephone salutation was, Hoi hoi, yeah, which is what 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:42.920 Mr Burns says when he picks up the phone on 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:47.719 on the Simpsons, Hoy hoy, that's delightful. Yeah, Alexander Graham, 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:51.599 Bell and everyone involved in phone companies hated the word hello. 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.240 They did, and we've got some notes about that. In 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:55.960 just a little bit. There was there was a very 0:06:56.040 --> 0:07:00.360 serious and an intense contention about this. Do you wonder 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:05.120 it was important with a capital I? But so in 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:10.000 Bell was getting financial backing from the fathers of two 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.120 of his students at Boston University, Thomas Sanders and um 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:17.880 Gardner Hubbard, and wound up forming the Bell Telephone Company right. 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.360 In fact, at first he tried to sell the telephone 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:23.360 patents to a rival company called Western Union. You may 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:25.280 have heard of that company. At the time, it was 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:28.400 the largest corporation in the world, and he offered to 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.520 sell it to them for the princely sum of one 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:32.920 hundred thousand dollars, and Western Union told him to take 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.320 a long walk off a short pier. Yeah, they didn't 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:39.000 at that particular point in time understand what this whole 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:40.800 telephone thing was about. They were like, that's a toy. 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.480 We don't get it right. If you wanted to send 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:45.840 a message to someone, why would you go through all 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.720 this bother when you could just telegraph it to them. 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:51.800 We've got perfectly good telegraph lines and swimming horses, why 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:56.520 exactly So, so they they poo pooed the idea, and 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.000 that's when Bell decided to go the other route and 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.119 form this company. And with that financial backing that Lauren 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.960 talked about, the Bell Telephone Company came into being. UM 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.600 and UH at first, it was a pretty modest affair 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.440 in the early days. They were seven seventy eight telephones 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:18.120 in existence period, and the company had a grand total 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.840 of one employee, and that one employee was Thomas Watson, 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.520 the former assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, and he was 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:29.000 He was paid the salary of three dollars per day 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.040 and also had one tenth interest in the company, which, 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:33.920 as it turns out, would probably be worth a little 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:38.920 bit more than his salary. Yeah, so Bell goes ahead 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:42.840 with his company. Uh. Meanwhile, Gray, who had done some 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:45.640 work for Western Union and had founded a company called 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:50.040 Western Electric that was acquired by Western Union, began to 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:55.400 compete against Bell, and uh, it got pretty nasty. Bell 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.600 started to look into how he wanted to well, really 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:00.600 the company was looking into how they wanted to form 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:03.960 the business, and they took a queue off the Morse 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.320 Company Telegraph Company and went with a franchise model. The 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:12.599 idea being that they would they would license out technology 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.320 and telephones and things of that nature to companies that 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:20.880 wanted to oversee the administrative efforts of handling this kind 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:25.360 of local regionalized phone system. And so Bell would end 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.599 up getting a company Bell would end up getting a 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.080 portion of that revenue uh in return for the fact 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:36.560 that they're licensing the technology to this other company. Right right, 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.560 because until Bell's patents would expire, the company was the 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.600 exclusive manufacturer and provider of telephones. UM. Those those patents 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.920 would expire in and that was a date that everyone 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:51.559 in Bell was very very anxious about. They were cognizant 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.000 of it, they were anxious about it. There were other 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:59.200 companies that did attempt to spring up despite this um 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:04.280 this legal uh monopoly that the Bell system had because 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:06.960 of the patents. UH. But we'll talk about that in 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:09.480 a second before we get too far into this, because 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.160 there's a lot to talk about. Let's take a quick 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:16.920 break to thank our sponsor. You've probably tried Hulu dot com. 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They were both launching franchises 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.480 across the United States. Western Union began to use leverage 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.000 by saying that they would not install any telegraph lines 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.120 in any locations that were using Bell systems. So any 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:14.160 region that relied heavily upon telegraph services wouldn't do business 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:16.760 with Bell because they were afraid that they did, they 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:19.680 would never have any improvements or repair or maintenance of 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.920 the telegraph systems or even operation of the telegraph system. 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:26.880 So it's kind of you know, holding Bell Systems hostage thing. 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:29.600 You don't you know, if you don't uh, you don't 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:33.320 get to play in this game because I own this game. Um. Now, 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.359 Western Union's telephones were based on the work of two inventors, 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:41.440 one of them Elisha Gray and the other Thomas Edison. Yeah, 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:46.760 so some big names here. And on September twelve, that's 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.560 when Bell Telephone Company sued Western Union, which is a 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:56.839 big story because Bell had a small fortune at his disposal. 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.200 Western Union was the largest corporation in the world at 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.559 that time. It worth more than forty one million dollars 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.679 and had the backing of a certain powerful family in 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:08.760 the United States, the Vanderbilts, And so it was a 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:12.520 big deal that Bell would go up against this corporate giant. 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:17.520 And that same year Gardner Hubbard, one of those financiers 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:20.520 who backed the Bell system in the very early days, 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:24.880 hired on a man named Theodore Newton Vale to act 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:29.440 as general manager slash president of Bell Telephone. Right. Veil 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.520 had previously worked for the US Postal Service and and 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:36.120 he was very key in orchestrating this legal battle. Yeah, 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.200 it's also interesting because Veil will play another important role 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.400 a bit further down the line. Veil had kind of 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.600 on again off again relationship with Bell Telephone. Not necessarily 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:48.960 all by choice, no, no, but but he did help 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:52.719 shape the company and absolutely and even as early as this, 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:55.720 he had this vision of building a national long distance 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:59.640 telephone network um and doing it before Bell's patents ran out, 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:04.280 so which was hugely ambitious, incredibly ambitious, a little too 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.720 ambitious it might turn out to be. In eighteen eighty, 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.200 Alexander Graham Bell decided to resign from the Bell Telephone 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.520 Board of directors um and the next year one Thomas 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:18.880 Watson would also resign. So at this point the two 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.240 inventors who gave the company the very basic invention that 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.600 it was all centered around, had left the board of 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.640 directors at that time, I believe was putting a lot 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:33.400 of pressure on. They didn't really see the immediate monetary 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:37.880 purpose of this whole nationwide network thing, and so they 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:41.400 were they were really getting down people's throats about like, 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:43.120 we kind of want to make money, we kind of 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:44.960 put some money in, we kind of want a little 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:47.760 bit back, And this is digging your heels in. Yeah, 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:49.600 this is a whole lot of us giving you money 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:51.880 and not a whole lot of us getting anything back. Right. Yeah, 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.520 there were there were many years when this company was 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:59.280 operating in debt because they were setting this stuff up. Also, 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.440 interest seeing little side note, Thomas Watson had a second 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:08.280 career after his work with telephone systems. He would begin 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:12.640 a career as a ship builder. He built ships him. Yeah, 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.880 it's kind of interesting, I just thought it was neat two. 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:20.320 This is about when Western Union and Bell Systems settle 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:25.160 this lawsuit. That's this ongoing dispute that had been pretty 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.320 much taking up all their time over the last couple 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:32.480 of years um because the pen infringement lawsuits were something 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.280 that was just nasty on all parts. Well, in that settlement, 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:39.400 Western Union ended up selling its telephone network to Bell, 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.160 so that was a network that was what there was. Like, 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:47.720 that's significant, So fifty five more cities go to Bell Systems. 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:52.760 Bell in return promised Western Union of its telephone rental revenue. 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:55.880 So Bell Telephone also acquired from Western Union the company 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.720 Western Electric that was the one that was founded by 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.200 Elisha Gray and that became a T and T s 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.560 manufacturing division. Hey guys, it's Jonathan from twenty. We are 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:07.720 going to take a quick break, but we will be 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:19.120 right back. So here's just a little information about how 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:21.680 the phone system used to work in the United States. 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:24.560 It used to be that you would go to a 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.400 store to get a phone and you leased it. You 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:31.200 didn't own that phone, so you actually that phone remained 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:33.960 the property of the parent company, which at this time 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:36.320 is Bell Systems, and shortly will become a T and T, 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:40.440 and so you would pay a leasing fee, and in turn, 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.120 the company that you got it from was likely not 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:45.960 directly a T and T. It was probably some regional 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:49.760 office that also was leasing that same phone from a 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:54.520 T and T. Certainly at this point it was Bell Systems. 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:56.760 But yeah, so Bell Systems leases out a phone to 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:59.440 a regional office, the regional office leases the phone out 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.080 to the custom So you didn't you never actually owned 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:04.840 that phone, which I think some people might find a 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:07.800 little unusual today because they think, well, I bought this 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.440 piece of electrically. I mean, you turn off the service. Fine, 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:13.800 I understand that, but that's my phone. Um, yeah not 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.320 back then, Nope, you were just renting it. Really, So 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.000 Western Union gets out of the way. So Bell system 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.879 effectively becomes a monopoly. And according to research terms of 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.560 telephone network capacity, yeah, they're they're pretty much the There 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:32.560 are other competing telephone networks, but they're all they're all 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:37.080 technically illegal at this time because this is still exactly so. 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:41.240 According to researcher John Brooks, Bell Telephone would have a 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.600 level more than six hundred patent infringement lawsuits against other 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:48.160 companies over the course of a decade, and they won 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.359 every single one of them. Because anytime a company would 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:54.040 come up, like there were companies that were trying to 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:58.080 create telephone systems in rural areas that Bell just had 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.560 not reached, and so they wanted to give people the 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.520 benefit of this technology. Bell did not have either the 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.320 ability or interest to go into that market. So they 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:08.840 would go ahead and do it themselves, and then Bell 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:10.840 would soothe them because they you can't do that. We 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:15.919 have the exclusivity rights to this technology, um, and you know, 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:17.760 and there's like, We're gonna get there and just give 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:19.919 us time. Meanwhile, everyone's like, but I wanted to call 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.280 my buddy. There's no nothing to call them on other 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:25.879 than sticking ahead out the window and shotting, hey, Jeb, 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:28.840 so I don't know why his name is Jeb short 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:33.480 for Jebediah eighty five. That is when a T and 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.920 T is officially formed as a subsidiary of Bell. Yeah, 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:42.439 and this is the the formal implementation of VAL's vision 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.640 of creating a long distance network. That's the main purpose 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:47.960 of a T and T. So a T and T 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:51.879 is all about building out a long distance network so 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:56.359 that people can call each other across states and across countries. 0:18:56.960 --> 0:19:00.000 Right by the end of eighty five, the company would 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:03.160 established the very first long distance connection between New York 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:06.520 and Philadelphia. It was capable of hand handling a huge 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:10.760 one call at a time, one call capacity. So I 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:12.880 can just imagine the circuits being busy over and over 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:16.600 and thinking they need to just wrap this up. Those 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:20.080 people in Philly are chatter boxes. Uh yeah, So that 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:21.600 was but it was really more of a proof of 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:24.480 concept obviously at that point, not necessarily something that was 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:26.399 going to be terribly practical. We're talking a little bit 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:29.000 about how expensive these phone calls were too. Oh yeah, yeah, 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:33.840 they got a little little dear. Um So that same 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:37.200 year was when the state of Indiana passed a law 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.919 restricting the price of telephone rental fees. So remember I 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:44.400 was saying, you rent your telephone, both the regional offices 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:47.360 do it and then the customers do it. But because 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.200 Bell was the only game in town, they could pretty 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.560 much dictate what those rental prices were going to be. Uh. 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.640 This this lawsuit said, well, you need to cut back 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:01.159 on those costs. So um Bell's response, The company's response 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:03.800 was saying, well, you know, we have to have these 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:07.840 prices because the service is expensive to to build out, 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:12.600 to administer, to maintain. We cannot operate at a lower cost. 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:15.840 We if we were to lower these this amount of money, 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:18.480 we would not make a profit. We would lose money 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:20.840 on the deal. We can't do it. So your phones 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.639 are off and they shut off the phones in Indiana. Yeah, 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:29.760 no more calls India. Yeah sorry, and um it would 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:34.760 be a couple of years before they would when service 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:39.800 was restored for one corporation to have. Yeah. Some people 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.040 said the A. T and T statement was that this 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.040 was an example of quote the futility of public action 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.280 and ignorance end quote, saying that you know, you guys 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:50.199 were all upset and you told us that we had 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.280 to do this thing, but you didn't understand that we 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:55.080 were doing it because that's financially what we have to do. 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:57.639 Other people said, no, A T and T held the 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:00.800 state hostage by saying you don't get phone calls until 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.399 you play ball, which I think is a fair that's 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.440 that's that's pretty awful. So well, without actually looking at 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.360 the financial books share and knowing that the company did 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:14.760 operate in debt for a while, entirely it's hard to say, 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:17.080 although you know at the time they were positing themselves 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:20.600 as sort of a public service almost that's right, akin 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:22.840 to something like the post Office, which would become much 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:27.960 more their their message in a few years. So seven 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:32.560 that was the first year that Theodore Vale resigned as president. Yea, 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:36.040 that that was directly, I think in due to his 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:38.600 frustration with the board, like he was saying earlier. And 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.119 there was a dispute with some Boston financial backers as well, 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:47.040 and all of that kind of fed into Veil's resignation. 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:48.920 He just decided that that was not where he needed 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:52.960 to be, so that he leaves. Don't worry, He's part 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:56.280 of the story is not over yet without him. Meanwhile, 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.960 in eighteen eighty nine, the Bell system would adopt the 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:05.000 first official Bell logo. Yeah what it looked like a bell? Yeah, okay, 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:09.000 that makes sense alright. That was when the first long 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:11.960 distance connection was established between New York and Chicago. And 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:14.760 this was the real display of long distance. You know, 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:18.040 New York to Philadelphia was impressive. New York to Chicago 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:23.080 was a much greater distance. So this was marked by 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:25.840 a ceremonial phone call. Graham Bell would make that one 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:29.000 as well, yep, Alexander Graham bells on the call. I 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:31.520 did not see who he was calling. Maybe it was 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:33.440 just you know, prank calls, and he was making prank 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:35.479 calls to Chicago and ordering pizza and then saying, our 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:37.480 pizza is better than your pizza. I can only hope, 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:40.119 I would really hope. So, I mean you think prank 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:43.600 called pizza, it fits so the after all, the very 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:45.400 first call on a mobile phone was a prank call. 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:48.960 But the capacity of this line was just like the 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:52.639 one from Philadelphia, one at a time, and it cost 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:55.600