Historical photos from the AT&T Photo Center.
Broadway at Cortland Street, about 1883.
Completion of installation of 2-l/2 mile under ground Brooks Oil Cable in Central Business District. 12/24/1886
Plant Construction – Open Wire, Scene on West Street in New York City around 1888.
Plant Construction – Aerial Linemen. A Group of linemen string wire from a house to the pole during a phone installation in West Paris, Maine about 1888.
Plant Construction – Linemen circa 1889, Source Bell Canada
This cable gang working at State and Kilby Streets in Boston in the early 1900s uses a reel of rope to pull cable in uder the street.
Plant construction crew, 1900s
Plant Motor Vehicles – Installation.
“Rapid Transit” helped telephone companies speed installation of Western Electric wall telephones in the early 1900s.
Plant Motor Vehicles Construction, Bell of PA
Plant Installation – 14,000th telephone installed – Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co.,
Charlotte, North Carolina
Plant Installation – Outside House
Plant Motor Vehicles
About 1906, the Pacific Tel. & Tel. Co. Purchased its first automobile. By 1912, when this picture was taken in San Jose, cars of many different makes were in use; although the company’s total investment in automotive equipment was only about $20,000.
Plant Construction – Open Wire. Looking West on Main Steet from the Capital Hotel at Frankfort, Kentucky. July 17, 1918.
Plant Construction – Aerial Linemen
Plant Construction – Splicing
Splicing wires on Highland Avenue Bridge, Atlanta, Georgia.
Plant Construction – Aerial Splicing
Plant Construction – Slacking off trolley spans before lifting pole.
The complete telephone man – 1911 vintage – was mobile, mechanized and well equipped. With his tools around
his waist, he carried phones on his back, chest and in his bicycle sack. As today telephone men 60 years ago were safety minded, which in that era included wearing your sleeve guards and trouser clamps.
Plant Installation – Installation of 50,000th telephone – Year 1925 Atlanta, Georgia.
Construction – Telephone Poles
Phoenix-Prescott Line – Year 1930
Plant Construction – With telephone poles balanced across the backs of study burros, a telephone construction job was completed up the slopes of Mt. Lowe near Los Angeles.
Prior to being carried by the burros, some of the poles were brought up several thousand feet on the Incline Railway. Year 1935 Pacifoc Telephone & Telegraph Co.
Traffic Operators – “Day Huey Bin Shi Ah ?” means “Number, Please?” in Chinatown.
But actually the telephone users of San Francisco’s Chinese colony insist on calling by name instead of number, so the operators must be able to associate the name and number of every one of the approximately 2,500
subscribers. The Chinatown telephone exchange is built like a pagoda, and its interior is decorated in Chinese red, black and gilt.
The characters in the telephone directory are painted by hand with a small brush, then the pages are photographed and made into engravings from which the directories are printed. Source: National Geographic – 1937