[GreenKeys] Western Electric: still in business...

[Larry Tighe]

Larry,

That was when you went to jail and you children were sold into slavery if 
you had an "illegal" extension fone in your house, wasn't it?

I think it cost about $8 for a 5 minute call to CA from NJ.  An answering 
service had to use their antiquated equipment so as not to do "harm to the 
public switched network".  Of course, they didn't care about rural areas so 
the AE phones worked just fine on the struggling independent companies...who 
were forced to pay exhorbitant connection fees to AT&T for finally being 
permitted to supply "long distance" on rented ATT equipment.

Of course, multiline key systems for incoming lines had to rent the key 
system from Bell System...pay extra for a colour fone????  Yep!

All of that followed Al Bell bribing a clerk in the patent office to allow a 
small change in his paperwork to jump ahead of the real inventor.

The Bell System was a ruthless and anti-competitive company that stiffled 
competition and creativeness.  Thanks to CarterPhone, the rails were finally 
greased for their demise.

I don't miss 'em   LOL

lar
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Western Electric: still in business...


>A tribute to the federal government...when I went to work for Western
> Electric in 1970, there were about 225,000 people on roll.  There were 
> still
> about 170,000 people on roll in the early 80's when the feds decided to
> destroy Bell.
>
> Larry
> WA5MLH