Telecommunication

Bell Telephone Company was a telecommunications company that led the Bell System of telephone services throughout North America between 1877 and 1983. This small collection of photographs documents the company's line-laying equipment and process; several images show workers driving tractors, digging trenches, and laying telephone lines. These images would be of interest to scholars of the history of technology and early telecommunications.

The papers of Bert Sheffield document his life and work to advance the science of electronics, specifically relating to computer engineering and telecommunications. It includes internal correspondence, performance data and notes, journal articles and reprints, meeting notes, product catalogs and RCA employee benefits policies.

Charles Jennings (1916-2006) served for more than forty years as RCA Global Communications’ primary liaison in Japan, figuring prominently in the development of post-World War II Japanese communications systems. The collection consists primarily of black and white and color photographs, albums, advertising posters, papers, and unbound scrapbook boards of photographs and ephemera. The images predominantly relate to Jennings’ business and personal life during his time in Japan, addressing the themes of Japanese and trans-Pacific telecommunications activities, particularly relating to RCA; postwar Japanese-American business and informal diplomatic relations; and life in postwar Tokyo.

MCI Communications Corporation (MCI) was a large telecommunications company. It was organized in October 1963 in Joliet, Illinois, by John D. (Jack) Goeken (1930-2010), as Microwave Communications, Inc. Goeken and his partners were planning to provide point-to-point private line microwave communications between Chicago and St. Louis to small businesses. This large collection documents the activities of the MCI Communications Corporation and its subsidiaries as well as the development of a competitive telecommunications industry in the United States and worldwide. The materials focus on MCI corporate life, public relations, technical operations, and sales and marketing activities. A vast amount of videotapes makes up a significant portion of the MCI collection, however, there are also photographs, slides, digital files, and audio cassette tapes.

MCI Communications Corporation (MCI) was one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. It was incorporated in Delaware in 1968 as Microwave Communications of America, Inc., to provide businesses with nationwide microwave telecommunications services at low prices. Being confronted by industry de facto monopoly AT&T in the interconnection of its lines to local facilities owned by AT&T affiliated regional Bell companies, MCI challenged the telecommunications giant with competitive long-distance telephone services, both in courts and at the marketplace. MCI-AT&T antitrust litigation (1974-1985) led to AT&T's divestiture of its regional carriers and changed the previously regulated telecommunications industry into a business open to competition. The collection documents all facets of MCI history from 1968 to the end of the 1990s, as well as changes in the American telecommunications regulatory policy, legislation, and public perception of the industry. Documents also include records of MCI's subsidiaries and their predecessors starting as early as 1849.

The Telecommunications series contains images of equipment, components, parts, and details. The series is arranged into six subseries: Equipment, Facsimile equipment, Mobile, Speech, Telephones, and TELEX. The materials date from 1930 to 1977.