Whipped Cream Difficulties

I thought it might be fun to dip back into the AT&T Tech Channel and their archives, and pick out some stuff related to telephones and telephony.

All of these videos have modern introductions, but I’ve set the embedded versions to skip over that intro. If you want to rewind, you’re certainly welcome to: I don’t control your browser. (Never mind that bitcoin miner I opened in a separate window.)

“Good-Bye, Central” is from 1978, and documents the last places that actually used central switchboards, instead of the dial system. This is just a little over 10 minutes, and even less if you skip over the intro.

“The Hello Machine” is also short, and is historically interesting: it was directed by Carroll Ballard in 1974. Mr. Ballard went on to direct “The Black Stallion”, “Never Cry Wolf”, and “Fly Away Home”, as well as doing second unit direction on “Star Wars”.

…a short, wordless film-poem, in which he chronicles the building of an entire ESS Mainframe. It’s a poetic musing on the connections between handwork and the act of communicating. In the film, he chronicles the act of making and building the mainframe with human hands so carefully that it becomes a handcraft, like weaving or sewing. As he elevates the frameworker to the status of craftperson, the mainframe itself becomes an artistic masterpiece, then brought to life by electricity. Ballard’s stance is that it takes humans to connect humans, not machines.

I know it might be a snoozer for some. (I think when you say “wordless film-poem”, you’ve lost Lawrence. Unless it has music by Philip Glass. Though now I’m wondering: could you do a “wordless film-poem” with tanks?) But: only 13 minutes, and less if you skip the intro.

One more: “To Communicate is the Beginning”, from 1976. This is a bit longer (32 minutes).

The words of luminaries such as Orson Welles and inventor Walter Brattain mingle with those of everyday folks like the operators of a Mom-and-Pop telephone company in Maine, as they attempt to illuminate why and how we are driven to communicate in this artfully-presented film.

There are other interesting folks in this besides Brattain and Welles (though you know I had to use this because Welles): I won’t spoil all of them for you, but I will say I was surprised that Vladimir Zworykin shows up. (He actually died in 1982, at the age of 94.)

Another spoiler (possibly): the Bryant Pond Telephone Company lasted until 1981. The company was sold to Oxford Networks, and Bryant Pond’s cranked system was converted to direct dial and incorporated into the regular network in 1983.