The Telecommunications History Group, Inc.

Below you'll find the Spring 2009 issue of Dial-Log, the Telecommunications History Group's quarterly newsletter. To return to the current issue, or to access other back issues, click the Back button on your browser or click here.

Spring 2009, Vol. 13, No. 1 Jody Georgeson, EDITOR

Contents

Director's Report
THG Board of Directors
The Road to the Corner Office
Museum of Communications
Get Your 2009 Calendars!
List of Principal Telephone Services Available
Reawakening
Mystery
Our Newest Communication Device
In Memory

Director’s Report
By Jody Georgeson

2008 was a busy year for us. In Denver, we:

processed 17 new collections
processed additions to 23 existing collections
fine-tuned existing collections (preservation work and indexing)
conducted research for over 30 people
averaged two on-site researchers per month
conducted tours of the 931 14th St. building and the Champa archives for approximately 100 people
gave historical presentations to over 60 people

In Seattle, the volunteers welcomed nearly 700 guests and were honored as the "Best Specialty Museum in Seattle." Together, our volunteers logged almost 10,000 hours of time.

The Seattle folks are busy completing the self-guided tour of their museum. It's been a huge task, but the results so far have been well worth the effort. In Denver, our big project in 2009 will be to get the TV studio up and running (see Herb's story).

We continue to hear about and experience the worsening economy. Here at THG we, too, are tightening our belts as we preserve and share the history of our industry. Thanks to you (our faithful members), endowment contributors, and our wonderful group of volunteers, we trust that we will continue our work for many years. Most of you have already responded with generous membership donations. For those of you who haven't, we hope you will be able to do so soon. We're all bombarded lately with messages urging us to donate in new ways--giving your car, including charities in your will, establishing trusts. I hope, when you are deciding how best to distribute your charitable resources, you will think of THG.

THG Board of Directors

THG's Board provides voluntary service in the form of oversight and management of the organization. They are instrumental in the planning, development and fundraising that supports our efforts to preserve the history of the telecommunications industry. This year, they're even helping to stuff envelopes for a huge fundraising project! I know you all join me in thanking them for their dedication.

We were sorry to lose two Board members in the past year. Both Bob Runice and Fred Jacobs will be sorely missed by all of us.

We've had the privilege of meeting new members this year. Welcome to Joan Masztaler and Dale Tomrdle.

Here's a list of the 2009 THG Board.

Officers:

Jack Shea - President
Executive Director, USW-Benefits (ret.)

Mary P. Riffle - Vice President
Director, Local Network, Qwest (ret.)

John C. Darrow - Secretary
Senior Software Developer, USW (ret.)

Robert R. Haack - Treasurer
VP Finance & Comptroller, NWB (ret.)

Members:

Laurence W. DeMuth, Jr.
EVP General Counsel & Secretary, USW (ret.)

Howard P.Doerr,
EVP/CFO, USW (ret.)

John J. Herbolich
Telecommunications Consultant

Laird, Pamela W.
Professor, Business History, CU-Denver

Lindblom, Thomas W.
Colorado VP (ret.), USW

Malkoski, Paul
I.S. Project Mgr Qwest (ret.)
Instructor, Community College of Aurora
Project Mgr Colorado Historical Society

Masztaler, Joan
Director, Wholesale Services, Qwest (ret.)

McClellan, Scott
VP Washington, U S West/Qwest (ret.)

Nearing, Michael W.
Lead Network Engineer, Qwest

O’Boyle, James
VP, Marketing, Mountain Bell (ret.)

Ostrand, Donald J.
Director, Museum of Communications

Pride, Kay
District Manager MB (ret.)

Smith, James A.
President, Qwest Dex (ret.)

Tomrdle, Dale
Founding Partner, NorthStone Group LLC

Warrick, Herbert H. Jr.
AVP Special Services & Engineering, PNB (ret.)

Wirtzfeld, Carey
Director, Qwest Foundation and Volunteer Programs

The Road to the Corner Office
Ray M. Morris
MST&T 1917-1952
By Rae Morris Benton

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to the daughter of Ray M. Morris about her Dad. She sent us some great photographs, a plaque commemorating his service on the Mountain States Board, and two delightful documents. This first is a brief biography of a "self-made man…a tribute to the spirit and founding of America." Next issue, we'll share her story of a little girl, visiting her father's office in the new MST&T Headquarters building.

Ray Marion Morris was born January 1, 1887 in Corning, Kansas to Marion Meyer Morris and Mary Adelaide Rucker Morris, the middle child of three. When he was little more than two years old, his father died from what was then called "swamp fever" and his mother became a seamstress to support her three children. He graduated from the eighth grade and sought work while studying whatever and whenever he could to further his education.

Ray Morris found his first employment with a telephone system in the small town where the local doctor had set up a switchboard in his garage. He began his 35-year career with Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company digging postholes.

Ray Morris (third from right) at the start of his career.
Note the climbing gear.

Mr. Morris pursued his self-education and continued to receive promotions with the company. While he was a district Manager he met his future wife, Edna Brown, in Durango, Colorado. Mountain States sent him to Harvard Business College for business management courses.

During rate cases, he served as a witness [at hearings] between the government and the telephone company. It was said that he could have passed the Colorado Bar examination to qualify as an attorney for the utility companies. Newspaper clippings attested to his volunteer service in many nonprofit and business-connected organizations. Ray M. Morris became [MST&T] executive vice president and served with presidents Frederick Reed and Floyd P. Ogden.

His son Robert Van Morris, a Stanford University graduate, joined Mountain States after serving in the navy as a pilot in WWII and retired as Vice President of Personnel. Grandson Christopher Elliot Morris graduated from Middlebury in Vermont, and was a member of the Finance Department of American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation in New York. The achievements in education of his son and grandson and their dedication to the former AT&T Corporation are a testament to the spirit of a self-made man.

Don Ostrand, Director of the Museum of Communications, found the following unattributed article in Seattle collection. It's not really all that brief, so this is the first installment.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF TOLL LINES IN THE STATE OF WASHINGTON

Five years prior to its admission into the Union as a state, Washington Territory established in 1864 their first long distance service.

In the western part of the Territory the lumbering and fishing industries had been developed extensively. Several thriving cities had been founded on the shore of Puget Sound where products of the mills, logging camps, and canneries could be loaded directly on sea-going vessels. The most important of these cities were Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham, Olympia, Port Townsend, Snohomish, and Anacortes.

In addition to the cities on Puget Sound, the lumbering towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam had been established on Grays Harbor; South Bend was established on Willapa Harbor.

A railroad operated between Tacoma and Portland. Several mill towns had been founded along its route, the most important being Centralia and Chehalis.

The agricultural possibilities of Western Washington had not been recognized. Building the cities and towns that resulted from the lumber industry naturally led to the cultivation of tillable land available in their immediate vicinities. In addition to small farming operations, the fertile valleys lying between Seattle and Tacoma were devoted to the production of hops and berries, and several towns had sprung up supporting these industries.

Likewise, the rich flats about Mount Vernon and La Conner produced much hay and grain. Coalmines were developed in the vicinity of Issaquah and North Bend and in the hills between Fairfax and Ravensdale.

There were not many wagon roads at the time; the waters of Puget Sound and its tributaries afforded such excellent water transportation that their need was not urgent. Some roads had, of course, been built between the inland towns, but for the most part land travel was by horseback along poorly developed trails through the woods.

In the eastern part of the Territory, the towns of Colfax and Walla Walla were the commercial centers. Both towns were located on the old Overland Trail and had been trading points for many years. The fertile prairies and rolling hills lying between them, known as the "Palouse Country", were rapidly settled into stock and wheat farms. Several smaller towns had been established as trading points in this section.

West of Spokane Falls, in "Big Bend Country," sheep-raising was the chief industry. Several towns had been established, chief of which was Davenport.

Silver and lead mines were developed east of Spokane Falls in the "Coeur d'Alene District" of Western Idaho; lumbering prospered in the forests lying between Spokane and British Columbia. In the central part of the Territory, a few agricultural communities were founded along the Columbia, Okanogan and Yakima Rivers.

Portland, Oregon was the principal market for the products of the Inland Empire. Although a railroad was in operation between Portland and Walla Walla, transportation was largely by means of steamers on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Roads had been built from various landing points on the rivers to the several towns. Due to the topography of the country, fairly good and direct roads had been established between the principal towns in the Big Bend Country and in the central part of the Territory. Communication was entirely by horseback and stage, and was consequently slow in the section north of the Snake River; no railroads were in operation there.

Telegraph lines had been built in the seventies by the [U.S.] Government between the various forts and trading posts along the old Overland Trail for the use of the army during the various Indian uprisings. However, by 1884 the Indians had been quieted, and the Government had no further use for the telegraph lines, which were abandoned. Few towns were reached by theshort commercial telegraph lines were in operation along the railroads.

The need for a means of rapid communication was keenly felt in these inland towns, which were many miles apart. It was natural, therefore, that the first long distance telephone line was established in this part of the Territory. In 1864, C. B. Hopkins, the editor of a newspaper in Colfax, purchased the old Government telegraph line between Colfax and Almota. This was the nearest landing point on the Snake River, and the point at which all freight entering and leaving the country north of the Snake River was loaded onto steamers.

This first line proved a financial success, as a great deal of business was conducted between Colfax and Almota. Businessmen quickly learned to appreciate the advantages of the telephone. Hopkins quite naturally wished to extend service to other communities, not only to aid him in collecting news, but with the further idea of gradually building up a telephone system. He purchased practically all of the abandoned Government telegraph lines and converted them into telephone lines.

By 1886 he had established telephone communication between all principal towns of the Palouse Country. This included towns in the vicinity of Colfax, Walla Walla, Spokane Falls, the Coeur d'Alene District of Idaho, and a few of the towns lying east of Spokane Falls. Telephone exchanges were established at Spokane Falls and Colfax.

These old Government telegraph lines were cheaply constructed of small poles set along roads and trails and carrying a single #9 iron wire.

Due to the rapid development of the industries around Spokane, it had grown to be the most important commercial center in the Inland Empire. Hopkins transferred the headquarters of his telephone system from Colfax to Spokane.

We'll continue this saga in the next issue of The Dial-Log.

Get your 2009 Calendars!

There are still some 2009 Pioneer Calendars available. All the images are from either the Telecommunications History Group Archives or from the AT&T collection. We work closely with the Pioneers and AT&T to come up with a new calendar each year.

Don't miss your opportunity to own and enjoy this calendar that celebrates the legacy of the telecommunications industry while supporting Pioneers making a difference!

CALL: 1-877-619-5276
or VISIT www.telecompioneers.org/calendar

List of Principal Telephone Services Available

This list was first published in the Northwestern Bell magazine, February 1929. According to a recent article, several of these are about to become extinct, including directory advertising and telephone landlines.

Exchange Service
Primary--

Main station (subscriber, semi-public, public)
Private branch exchange
Intercommunicating System
Foreign exchange
Joint user

Auxiliary--

Extension and p.b.x. stations
Order tables
Wiring plans
Busy test cabinets
Jack and plug equipment
Secretarial arrangements
Miscellaneous equipment, etc.

Toll Service
Message toll services
Full and short period talking service
Public news service
Toll terminals

Directory Service
Listings (extra, alternate call number and night)
Foreign and street address directories
Directory advertising

Miscellaneous Service
Extension
Tie and private lines
Telephone typewriter
Telephoto
Morse
Radio broadcasting and speech input equipment
Public address system
Circuits for operating signaling and other devices

Reawakening
By Herb Hackenburg

“We woke it up, then put it to bed. Now we’re waking it up again.”

THG volunteer Ron Pickens was talking about his current THG project. Ron’s THG volunteer partner is Roy Lynn, who repairs the 100-year-old magneto telephone system for the U.S. Forest Service every summer. Ron and Roy are building a television studio. Again.

Ron Pickens

Mountain Bell was one of the earliest Bell System companies to build and operate its own commercial grade television studio. The studio began in 1969 in a small space on the 12th floor of the Mountain States Telegraph & Telephone Company headquarters building in downtown Denver. The company hired Jerry Drake, who had been producing television commercials in Colorado Springs, to run its new television production operation. Among Jerry’s first hires were Bob Cook, a well-respected television engineer, and Jack Dinkmeyer, a producer/lighting engineer/instructor from the University of Denver’s educational television station. Their first job was to design a TV studio. Once that was accomplished, Bob ordered the equipment and installed it. Jack installed the track lighting.

“The damn studio was so small we only had room for one camera and we could only take ‘talking head’ shots. Those old shows weren’t much to look at, but it made the directing and editing easy,” Bob said.

“Those shows were well lighted, though,” Jack added with a laugh.

In 1973, they moved the studio to a larger space on the building’s main floor. Cook was asked again to design the studio, order the new equipment, and supervise its installation.

In 1984, divestiture broke the Bell System apart and Mountain Bell became one of the three operating companies of US WEST. In 1985, the television studio moved to the 50th floor of the Mountain Bell headquarters building at 1801 California Street in Denver. Again, Bob Cook supervised the design, equipment ordering and installation. By this time the studio’s staff had grown to commercial-station size, and Cook brought on Pickens and Lynn as television engineers. The three of them did the job.

The U S WEST television operation became as large and professional as a commercial television station in a mid-sized city. The staff produced programs in the field; remote broadcasts were standard; and US WEST had its own television network with the main studio in Denver and smaller studios in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Minneapolis, Seattle, and its training center in Lakewood, Colorado.

In 1990, Herb Hackenburg, Cook and Dinkmeyer took advantage of a massive buyout offer and held their retirement party in the same bar as the MB/US WEST television crew always held its post-production meetings.

The old U S WEST TV studio also retired in 1990…sort of. US WEST brought in contract employees to run the studio for a while, until outside production companies began to produce the company’s television programs. The old studio just wasn’t used very often.

Roy Lynn

Pickens became a telecomm facilities engineer and Lynn moved on to become a microwave engineer. Lynn had to train on how to climb microwave towers—a very dangerous job in mountain country. Pickens designed the temporary video networks for the G8 Summit (Denver), the Alpine World Cup (Vail), and the Oklahoma City bomber trial (Denver).

In 2001, Pickens’s boss called him on the phone saying, “Ron. Got a minute?” Ron was fired, along with 6,499 other managers.

In 2004, Lynn’s boss said, “Do you have a minute?” and Roy, too, joined the long list of the suddenly retired.

A strange thing happened along the way. Soon after they retired, all these retirees became THG volunteers.

Because of the original “Cook Connection,” THG was able to collect most of the master tapes produced by the Mountain Bell and US WEST television studios, plus many of the Northwestern Bell master tapes in 1990. THG also collected many of the tapes of television ads produced by AT&T, Mountain Bell, and Northwestern Bell from the ’50s through the ’80s.

The connections continue.

At one time Dave Felice was a writer and a voice for the Mountain Bell television crew. (He had a radio show in Utah in his previous career as broadcast journalist.) Bill Benham came from the AT&T television team in New Jersey to the Mountain Bell TV team as a writer/producer. About a year later Benham became the fulltime budget director for the TV studio, and then for the entire Public Relations Department.

Felice has been a THG volunteer since 1990, and continues today as he remains employed by Qwest. Truth be known, the THG archive contains several historic artifacts Felice procured prior to Divestiture on January 1, 1984.

One of Benham's last jobs was to officially declare the Qwest Public Relations Department’s equipment obsolete or surplus. And one of Felice’s current official jobs is to distribute surplus/obsolete Qwest equipment to nonprofit agencies throughout the Qwest operating area. His operation and THG’s operation area are housed on Qwest’s two “condominiumized” floors in the AT&T Champa Street building.

Just prior to his retirement in 2008, Bill Benham talked to his old friend Roy Lynn about possibly surplussing the entire U S WEST TV studio. Then Lynn talked to Ron Pickens, and both talked to Jody Georgeson, who runs things at THG, which happens to be a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit agency.

Georgeson said words to the effect, “We’ve got more than 6,000 television tapes in every format that was used over the past fifty years and we can’t process them because we don’t have the equipment to view them. We can use that equipment if we can find a place to put it.”

Dave Felice

Felice found the place across the hall from the THG Archive’s front door.

Last year, Bill Benham surplussed all of the equipment in the television studio. [By Federal Government mandate, all analog television equipment will become outdated for broadcast use on February 17, 2009.] The surplussed equipment was trucked four blocks away to the AT&T building where it was delivered to Dave Felice who had it sent on the freight-elevator to THG on the fifth floor.

Now Ron Pickens and Roy Lynn are rebuilding the television production facility they originally built nearly a quarter-of-century ago. In the near future, THG will be able to view and rerecord all of its analog video tapes in one-inch; three-quarter inch; and, one-half inch Beta®, laser disk, Beta Cam SP®, D-3- inch digital format, VHS, and Super VHS formats. The new studio will also have reel-to-reel, one-quarter inch and cassette audio equipment. All of the equipment is of commercial studio quality.

Thanks to an historic set of connections, an extraordinary group of volunteers, and the people at Qwest, THG will soon have one of the best television tape archival facilities in the nation. Ultimately, with the addition of a high-capacity data-storage device used as a file server and an analog-to-digital converter (recording device) and a super volunteer/special intern/hired technician (human), THG could provide television tape processing capacity for itself and other archives.

Mystery

What is this little building? How was it used and what did it house?

The THG member with the best answer will win a handy 16" x 11.5" x 6" cloth shopping bag with THG logo that lets you carry groceries, projects or what have you with ease. Remember, you must be a member to win.

Our Newest Communication Device

Thanks to Jill Hollingsworth of Qwest, who sent us our latest acquisition.

The development of the modern hearing aid might not have been possible had it not been for the contributions of one of the greatest inventors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Alexander Graham Bell electronically amplified sound in his telephone using a carbon microphone and battery -- a concept that was adopted by hearing aid manufacturers. Hearing aids past and present have the same basic function: to increase the volume of sound for the impaired user. Before electricity, the only way to do that was to filter out other noise by directing the desired sound straight into the ear with some kind of tube or trumpet.

This model was probably used in the 1700s. Versions of the ear trumpet ranging from bull's horns to seashells have most likely been used by humans for thousands of years.

The first hearing aids were enormous, horn-shaped trumpets with a large, open piece at one end that collected sound. The trumpet gradually tapered into a thin tube that funneled the sound into the ear.

This ear tube allowed the user to get sound straight from the source: the speaker held one end, while the user placed the other over the ear. 1887.

The first electric hearing aids came to market around 1901 and were very large and impractical. However, the desktop devices all used separate components: a carbon microphone, processing unit, battery box and, headpiece. Batteries often did not last more than a few hours. These early desktop models were also very expensive, costing up to $400 each.

Some hearing aid manufacturers have recognized the importance of preserving hearing aid history. For example, Oticon has an Eriksholm Museum in Denmark for showcasing old hearing aids. The museum has the ancient trumpet style hearing aids, a transistor style hearing aid, and early behind-the-ear aids.

In New York City you can visit the hearing aid museum at the League for the Hard of Hearing. More than 50 hearing aids from the 1880s to the 1980s are showcased at the League. The American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, John Q. Adams Center in Alexandria, Virginia also has a collection of antique hearing aids.

If you have an old hearing aid (or one of the very first cochlear implants) that is too old to be of interest to any hearing aid banks, you might want to consider donating it to one of the existing hearing aid museums, helping to preserve hearing aid history.

Early desktop hearing aid

In Memory

Keith Grenville Eddy, Sr. 1924-2008
Keith Eddy died in December in Salem, Oregon. Born in Colorado, Keith graduated from Fort Collins High. He served in the U.S. Army during WWII, after which he returned to Colorado State University, finishing his degree in Electrical Engineering in 1947.

He then began his career with the Bell System, which spanned over 40 years. During the 1960s Keith played a key role with Bell Telephone Laboratories Military Commission, heading The Survivability and Feasibility Studies for Intercontinental Communications with NATO and NORAD. He also supervised The Network Planning Group for BTL Military Comm. Systems Engineering Center, the group that created and designed the first secure line for the White House for Lyndon Johnson. During the Cold War years, he held top-secret clearance status at the Pentagon. Keith was a lifetime member of The Telephone Pioneers.

Don Elliot Heald, The Voice of Time
For many years, people across America could dial a phone number to find out what time it was. Don Elliot's was the voice we all heard. His was the recorded voice on a national service called Audichron.

Mr. Heald died of congestive heart failure Thursday at his home in Atlanta. He was 86.

Mr. Heald was born in Concord, Mass., in 1922 and moved with his family to Florida. After graduating from the University of Florida, he moved to Atlanta and WSB-TV in 1950. A news anchor turned general manager of WSB-TV for 16 years, he hired the first African-American on-air TV reporter in 1967 and later the first black evening news anchor. Mr. Heald was founding president of the Southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and was elected to the Georgia Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1997. He was a vice president of Cox Broadcasting.

The story of the Audiochron machine in THG's Museum of Communications is in the Spring 2007 (Vol. 11, no. 2) edition of the Dial-Log.

© 2009 The Telecommunications History Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.