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The AT&T Archives Post-SBC Merger?
mrfantasy writes "An article in the Newark, NJ Star-Ledge discusses the possible fate of the AT&T Archives, which is a huge, irreplaceable historical repository of most of the advancements of late 19th and 20th century communications. Corporate archives are often casualties of companies when they are subsumed by a parent organization. The archives include such things as long-distance telephone directories from the mid-1890s, containing every long distance subscriber in the country, including Alexander Graham Bell himself; and a microphone from Warren Harding's 1921 inauguration, the first heard by the crowd thanks to AT&T amplification equipment."
Alexander Graham Bell's Phone Number: 1
Firstly, it's the "Star Ledger", not the "Star Ledge"; secondly, it's AT&T, not AT&aT. What's with the editors these days?
Although possible, I find it unlikely that SBC would not value AT&T's heritage as much as, and as part of, its own. It is a Bell operating company after all, with many veteran execs from the Bell system of yore. It may even use the AT&T name after the merger.
Scene: 19th century, A Telephone rings
[Voice on phone]: "Hi, is this 7?"
[Guy]: "No, this is 3!"
Hey, here is an idea.
Why don't we create a national museum or series of museums to house and display things relating to our national history or just cool things in general.
You know we could put the museum(s) in a central location. Like the nation's capit[a|o]l.
Maybe we could get some really wealthy person to donate money for the museum(s). We could be nice and name the museum(s) after that person.
Hell, I beat the guy could even be a British scientist. Congress could be a big help here.
And since it is a government sponsored museum, entry could be free, or a nominal charge.
Someday the museum(s) could grow to be the largest museum complex in the world. They could function as "an establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge."
Yeah, that would be great.
My first summer job in high school was at the Warren AT&T archives. I wound up staying on for 4 years
The archive is a treasure trove of hardware for sure, but there are an incredible number of technical papers and photographs as well; Bell and Watson's lab notes while developing the phone, research notes on the development of the transistor and the Lab's UNIX flavor and more. David Korn's research notes on Ksh development or Arno Penzias' reports of his accidential verification of cosmic background radiation might be of interest to some /. collectors should the whole lot end up on the auction block.
The place is crazy. It's not just the History of AT&T, it's the Great Library of information technology. Hopefully SBC will see it that way too. Last I heard, they had completed indexing and uncrating over 9 miles of paper case files (researcher's project notes) from the 1890's to 1980's. The number of talented scientists who spent their lives at the Labs helping create the IT infrastructure you're soaking in is astounding. As a research lab supported by a monopoly utility, they had unprecedented resources to explore all kinds of ideas. It's all there. Neat stuff.
One of my favourite pieces was a 1960's prototype for an operator's uniform. Very Star Trek:TOS. Ohura's uniform in gold lamee. Some Suit thought it might be a good idea to have all the operators (almost entirely female at the time) wear uniforms, and this is what they came up with.
But I'm waxing philosophic. SBC will save the tech documents at least, to protect the intellectual property they're buying with the hard assets. As for the old phone booths, recording equipment and videophone prototypes, maybe they'll end up in private collections or museums. Either way, hopefully more people will get to see and appreciate them.
There's no story here. The reporter has no reason to think this will happen. Nobody with either company has said the archives will be thrown out. AT&T's former archivist thinks SBC is good about keeping archives. SBC's spokesman says they keep archives. Some professor somewhere says, with no evidence at all, that they'll throw it all away, and that gives a bored reporter a hook to hang a bullshit story on.
Calm down, they'll keep it or give it to a museum.
Phone books are one way to supplement geneology. One of my great-great grandfathers had a home phone in the 1890s.