[Illustration: Bakelite telephone]
When you pick up your telephone, you have at your fingertips a
communication system that is mainly local in its operations. Probably
you will use it most of the time to talk to people in or near your own
community, but wherever you wish, it can carry your voice across the
continent or even across the seas to other countries. The telephone
industry in the United States now includes:
■ Telephones serving homes and businesses in 75,000 cities and towns,
and more than 3,000,000 telephones in rural areas.
■ A network of wire linking these telephones. About 95 per cent of this
wire is in sturdy cables, and almost three-fifths of the cable is
underground.
■ More than 25,000 central offices in which telephones are connected by
means of switching equipment. Over 9,500 of these offices are operated
by Bell System companies.
■ Literally billions of small parts—relays, condensers, resistors,
vacuum tubes each carefully designed and finely fashioned so that it
will work in harmony with all other parts, anywhere in the country.
■ Radio-telephone links to automobiles, trains, ships, airplanes, and
countries overseas.
■ A growing system of radio relay routes used for transmitting both long
distance telephone conversations and television programs.
■ Highly skilled telephone people living and working in nearly every
American community. The Bell System alone employs about 700,000 men and
women, who are busy planning, designing, manufacturing, improving,
building, operating—all working to fulfill the traditional telephone
policy of providing the best possible service at the lowest possible
cost.