bapat@uunet.uu.net (Subodh Bapat) (11/13/90)
While on a recent visit to Atlanta, GA, I happened to discover the Telephone Pioneer's Museum located there. This is a fascinating place, featuring all kinds of telephone equipment from the early days of telephone history. Aside from technical displays, it also chronicles the business history of the telephone industry - the legal patent battles between Bell and Elisha Gray, the empire-building expansionism of Ted Vail, antitrust legislation through the ages, the disastrous experiment with the nationalization of AT&T by the Federal Government during World War I, etc. etc. It also contains a recording of a speech given by Thomas Watson in 1927 (?) describing the moments of the first telephone invention when he worked with Bell. An interesting titbit I picked up was the fact that the first words - now legend - spoken by Bell on the phone "Come here, Mr. Watson, I need you!" were not what he planned to say, but they came out because, just as he was picking up the phone, Bell accidentally knocked over the battery that was powering his apparatus, spilling acid all over his arm. It is perhaps fitting that the first telephone coversation was a 911 call :-). For those of you planning to visit Atlanta, it's located on the third floor of the 45-story Southern Bell Building in midtown Atlanta, open 11am-1pm on weekdays. It's definitely worth a visit (and worth skipping lunch if you have to!) P.S. On a unrelated note, just two blocks from the Southern Bell Building, I ran into the worst COCOTs I've ever seen. Aside from the usual woes - horrible sound quality, multiple intercepts coming on simultaneously, snarfing coins on unsupervised calls, no alternative LD carrier access, refusal to accept calling cards, I ran into a new atrocity - "0" and "00" not producing live operators, but instead recordings saying no operators were available followed by calling instructions. It would have taken very little tempting to get me to violation-label those phones right there. Subodh Bapat bapat@rm1.uu.net OR ...uunet!rm1!bapat MS E-204, PO Box 407044, Racal-Milgo, Ft Lauderdale, FL 33340 (305) 846-6068