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March 20, 2025 6:27 PM

The AT&T Tech Channel on YouTube posts videos from the telecom giant's century-old archives, including some legitimately interesting documentaries. Reconnecting 170,000 Phone Customers in NYC After a Major Fire (1975) and The Life of a Telephone Operator in 1969 are both fascinating time capsules of corporate America. A wide variety of other videos, from interviews with famous Bell Labs alumni to advertisements and trainings, are scattered across the channel's uploads.
posted by redct (13 comments total)

Thanks for sharing the family of products video. The little sketches are honestly pretty charming! Sometimes I feel sad that obsolete technology just sort of has it's evolution cut short, losing so many of the well thought out features that came with being used so frequently by so many.
posted by donuy at 6:38 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]

It is criminal-- criminal, I say, jail for a thousand years!-- to mention the AT&T Tech Channel without linking to the towering monument of cinematic brilliance that is How To Install Modular Jacks by Yourself.
I watch this video at least once a year. You can't stop me.
posted by phooky at 6:39 PM on March 20 [6 favorites]

Favorited hard.
posted by Lemkin at 7:02 PM on March 20

My apologies-- the modular jack installation video appears at the end of the "advertisements" link in the FPP, although that version does not include the catchy Casio Latin "Do It Yourself, It's a Snap!" track that closes out the version I linked. Your sentence is reduced to time served.
posted by phooky at 7:11 PM on March 20 [4 favorites]

The beginning of that modular jacks video is great because dude comes home, wonders where his wife is, opens the fridge, opens the oven, and only then says "where's dinner?" Without that line he'd appear to be thinking that his wife is possibly hiding in the fridge or the oven.
posted by axiom at 7:21 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]

Ma Bell brat here. This story was LEGEND in our home during my early childhood.
That's my dad (quiet guy) at around minute 14:50. Mind. Blown. Thanks, redct!
posted by FairWitness at 7:53 PM on March 20 [13 favorites]

There are just so many moments to treasure in that video. This time around I just noticed how the AT&T sales guy with the startlingly ill-advised blue shirt (sadly cut from the compilation version) explains that to install a modular jack the first step is to cut the wires to your existing phone, and then blithely reminds the customer that if she runs into any trouble, she can always make a toll-free call to their support department.
posted by phooky at 8:21 PM on March 20

Those 25ft / 50ft extension leads (which we never thought of as a trip&fall hazard) have achieved years of later utility as washing lines.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:42 AM on March 21

One of my grandmothers worked her way up to head operator for the city of Miami. She worked one of those huge plug consoles for decades- which was amazing, as she stood 4'10" and those consoles were so tall!

Add in that for most of her years she was required to be in full makeup, girdle and 3" heels... Her feet were permanently deformed from decades of hooking her heels on her stool and pushing herself up to reach the highest plugs. Even twenty years after her retirement, after 2 decades without heels on, her feet still made the shape of a high heel at rest.

I was at a museum with her that had one of the old plug consoles, and it was just shocking how huge it was and how tiny she was in comparison.
posted by Vigilant at 3:14 AM on March 21 [7 favorites]

A couple of off piste remarks on the Claude Shannon = Bell Labs Alumni link. 1) The resemblance between late Shannon and late EO Wilson is no evidence that they were identical twins separated at birth - white quiff plus suit and tie being nurture not nature. 2) There's a younger Neil "OEIS" Sloane giving tribs to Shannon! Sloane is still going strong on Numberphile.
posted by BobTheScientist at 5:42 AM on March 21

Folks digging this may also enjoy the 1993 Western Public Radio series Hell's Bells: A Radio History of the Telephone.
posted by reedbird_hill at 7:16 AM on March 21

The Saul Bass 1969 pitch video for the Bell System Logo Redesign on the channel is absurdly entertaining, both a wild tour de force entirely of its time while also being a serious and cogent exploration of advertising psychology.
posted by eschatfische at 10:12 AM on March 21 [2 favorites]

I have a few favorites from the channel:

Century 21 Calling is a nice snapshot of the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle, with the new Space Needle and Monorail. You can enjoy the happy young couple shoving their way through the crowds to get to what they really came for - the AT&T Communication pavilion. I think MST3K has spoofed this one a few times.

The Voder: AT&T doesn't have this on their channel but it should be. This was the demonstration of machine-generated speech at the 1939 World's Fair. The early Bell Labs research on coding voice into data and back again resulted in two big things: the Vocoder, used by musicians all over, and SIGSALY, a top-secret voice encryption system used in World War II (same video).

Telezonia: Well, I can't really explain this one. But I bet a lot of 70s-era substitute teachers whipped this one out to kill time when Mulligan Stew was already checked out of the library.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:59 AM on March 21