AT&T Archives: Submarine Cable Systems Development 

I wish there had been some way to keep Bell Labs around after AT&T was broken up in 1983... There's just not anything like it in existence today -- a *giant* (yet privately-owned) facility, with almost unlimited resources, that engages in pure research simply for the sake of research. There is *so much* of our technology today that is *directly* related to discoveries made at Bell Labs.

These people are the real fathers of modern telecommunications. Thank you for your contribution to the betterment of humanity

Proud to be a part of AT&T❤️

It’s the amount of detail that impresses me.

Why is this short more entertaining than today's (2019) television which is slowly becoming mindless. BTW, I'd like to see design and building of the machinery that went into making the cable and testing them.

I love watching videos like this that show how stuff is made and how it's put together very entertaining

I vibe so hard with these types of videos

Early coaxial cable topped off at around 20 MHz in the 1920s, when the technology was very new. Carrier telephone with open wire was at that upper limit and coaxial cable was invented to solve problem of the line radiating. By the start of the second world war 200 MHz circuits were in use. After the war it was microwave radio links. Now it is fiber optic cable. But 500 MHz cables do work, very common in cable TV.

This was really cool to see. Especially after watching the film about the CS Longlines cable laying ship. They use all the things developed in this video

Much better than the new productions of information.

I worked for RCA and Pan AM in the 80s was a Sub-cable diver with PanAm we kept subcables that had been laid in the 50s still working well into the 80s all underwater, except the shore-end and terminations.

Gorgeous repeaters & happy engineers.

Our ancestors trying to give us a comfortable and connected world

AT&T sold off its undersea cable business to Tyco International in 1997. AT&T no longer does any of the things described in this video - they simply purchase capacity in the marketplace from the companies that still construct and operate undersea cable systems

While I recognize the need to break up MA Bell back in the 80s the resulting loss of Bell labs to R&D was an incalculable loss to the technological, financial and military strength of the US.

Can we get higher resolution scans of these in the near future. I’m sure that these pulled up on 4K would still hold up well

It's a shame of how so much of this technology is obsolete today

Is this guys voice on every old documentary? who is he?

Imagine being in the lab, even developing your own tape deck decades before the cassette tape..

Honestly, in general I feel like people from the 50s and 60s explain confusing stuff a lot better than they do today.

"Capable of handling 100 or more channels". Bless :-D

Men in ties building stuff.

They mentioned the word broadband several times in this video but boy they have no idea what broadband is today compared to what it was back then

i wonder if the original heavy cable from the 19th century that spanned the atlantic still exists even though long LONG since decommissioned

Is there information regarding twisting of the cable when unwinding? For me, it would seem like the cable is torsioned when unwinding...

What a brilliant and woderful people. Where are these people today ? I own my life comforts to them . why I am so useless compare to them?

Amazing

A **hundred** conversations at once? Lmao

What would these people think about fiber optic and the internet i wonder

THE REAL SATELLITES..

They've been changing the definition of "broadband" since the fifties

Bet nobody knew that AT^T had a submarine division?

AT&T - Where did you put the taps for the NSA?

I cant iamgine this cable still being used today. The advent of satellites surely put cables out of business.

I have a strength member in the center.

These were frequency division multiplex, 4 wire equivalent circuits with east-west in one frequency band and west east in a different band. I can't imagine that the frequencies exceeded 5 mhz in the early systems. Probably lower. And they sounded like hell!

That way, Batman can talk to Aquaman whenever he needs to!

What was the frequency range of this coaxial cable? Was this full duplex or were a pair of cables required?

Such hard intense work went into making peoples lives modern moving forward now is need to pay attention to lot of other social civil matters with equally diligence not what societies leaderships have spiraled into , restructuring reforming mostly from medical housing systems to major one of waste garbage managment

I wonder what electron tube designation number he's talking about at 10:50? Anyone know what it is?

Very cool!!👍👍

Great vid, you would not be wearing ties anywhere near machinery nowadays though!

coax cable systems today are being deployed to handle up to 1 ghz of bandwidth known as HFC (hybrid fibre coax) Digital and analog signals are transmitted over fibre from the cable companies Central office (known as a head end) over fibre then converted to coaxial cable for the last mile.

Yes indeed, in retrospect those seemed like the good old days. Asking everyday Americans the scope of Bell Labs would be akin to blind men describing their experience touching an elephant, and not only that, doing so over the entire lifetime. The comments here are both interesting and entertaining. Generally, IMO here's some of the various ways to describe Bell Labs: - technological communications breakthroughs in satellites/submarine cables/lasers (including use to trap atoms)/switching systems including ESS/cellular & CDMA/TDMA or... - discoveries in fundamental physics as the transistor/TTL logic/solar cells/big bang theory/cosmic microwave radiation/wave matter/LSI MOS-FET/CCD sensors/Time Domain Reflectometry or... - breakthroughs in computer sciences like Unix/C and C++ Object-oriented Programming/Source Code Control Systems or... - wartime divisions work as tow-way radios/proximity fuses/Nike missile/Bazooka/their Sandia Labs support on nuclear devices/voice encryption/cryptography/SONAR/RADAR/codebreaking Others would describe Bell Labs by its physical locations like Murray Hill, Holmdel, White Plains, Freehold, Lincroft, Middletown, Naperville-Lisle, Indian Hills, Whippany, Columbus, Denver, Andover, Indianapolis, Greensboro, Alamogordo, etc Some would point to their plethora of patents, too numerous to cite. On that note, when Google decided to compete in the smartphone space they wisely bought Motorola to own their patents that allowed them to counter-sue other manufacturers, soon spinning of the Motorola acquisition minus their patents. Bell Labs being part of the AT&T monopoly wasn't into aggressive lawsuits and didn't "lawyer up" like today's entrepreneurial market leaders. Yet others would point to the evolution of Bell Labs over time, most of us struggling to identify the impact both within the organization and impacts to customers and the United States itself. Going way back, Alexander Graham Bell was very lucky that Western Union let Bell's voice patents slide, thinking Western Unions teletype and telegraph was the future of telephony. Fifteen years later Western Electric was formed, later to be the parent of Bell Labs under the overarching AT&T. Forty years later the Labs were ready to avoid the New York congestion and moved to Murray Hill and began to spread out in New Jersey. The parent AT&T followed likewise, formally making legal entities for AT&T and Western Electric in 1925, with Bell Labs reporting to "WECO." Bell Labs began to blossom, especially in the 1940 as World War II broke out. Of course in 1984 when Judge Green oversaw the Divestiture of AT&T and Long Lines from the 23 Bell Operating companies, the writing was on the wall that life would forever change. Initially "BellCore" grabbed some Bell Labs folks to work under a unit called AT&T Labs. A decade later came yet another split-up, this time a Tri-vestiture as AT&T spun-off NCR and Western Electric (aka Network Systems)/Bell Labs. Initially life was grand during the "Dot-Com" boom cycle as Lucent stock went up 10-fold. But with all boom surges, a bust shall follow with the glut of telecom gear sold, the emergence of lowball Chinese manufacturers who commoditized the marketplace, as well as technological improvements Internet packet-based telecom switching. By 2000, competitors Alcatel and Nortel were still going strong (for a while) but when Lucent started sinking and it couldn't reach a merger-acquisition agreement with Alcatel, Lucent's stock price seemed to match their corporate logo (a splashy RED ZERO). Lucent's business systems was sold to Avaya to raise cash, then microelectronics to Agere Systems as Lucent continued to bleed Billion$ of losses each quarter. Soon Lucent was down to 30,000 employees from 165,000 in its heyday (yes, I was one to eventually hit the dusty trail, myself). Finally by 2006, Lucent agreed to merge with Alcatel but the marriage was not successful so 10 years later the Lucent-Alcatel entity was merged by Nokia. Amen. Michael

Tgff great stuff.

What was the maximum frequency range of this coaxial cable? Did the cable operate in a full duplex mode, and if so, how? TDMA? FDMA, or were a pair of cables required?

imagine if it got tangled

I cant imagine germanium transistors doing this?

Is crazy to think that this “state of the art” transmission cabling couldnt even transmit or receive 10 meg.. now we have fiber optic cabling that sit on the same pathway these cables took in the oceans but can push a terabyte/ second... the lasers they use to push those signals are friggn huge and radioactive

What about satellites?

very far from easy, we take all these things for granted

Peak

And to think all this was going on during the cold war.

I need to kiss their hands.

Ешкин кот как интересно, только ничего не понятно)

Contribution of Good camps excellent brains innovations of first line USA to world is immense, the only factor which saves it’s Good side name from Alexander Graham Bell telephone to Disney yes! The first one to realize it’s imaginative animation amusement park amidst struggles of epic proposition I read saw all historical facts, rest followed later which is to say it’s not bad but given a way to create rest what got created today world is reaping immense profits from those first line creators brains selflessly given to all

First? Rubbish. Telegraph cables were first laid back in the 19th century.

Forget the cable, boys, we're going to use satellites instead.

#facttime this technology was made arbitrary by cell phones as they no longer required a hard wired connection. Back in the day to make a transoceanic call you had to bring your OWN landline to your local "TOPS" (trans oceanic phone station) and plug it into the giant cable. I sure am glad cell phones were invented

and then came huawei ... adios gringos