Newswise — The AT&T Archives and History Center doesn't make much of a first impression. Located on a quiet wooded road in Warren, N.J., its fluorescent-lit hallways and nondescript offices could easily be mistaken for some back-office operation. Then you enter the cavernous, 12-meter-high warehouse.
There, antiquated switchboards and steel shelves filled with dust-covered telephones stand alongside weird vacuum tubes and outmoded antennas. Behind a metal cage, a Western Electric washing machine, from an early experiment in diversification, stands in the shadows. Beneath a blue tarp lies a three-quarter-scale model of the first Telstar communications satellite. A big wooden packing crate conceals plaster molds from the famous Golden Boy statue, which once perched atop AT&T headquarters in downtown New York City. You can even smell the history: slightly cold and musty, with an edge of iron and machine oil.
Once your eyes adjust to the dim light, you finally start to get it. Believe it or not, that bizarre-looking kludge of camera and turntable was the very first motion-picture sound system. In the archive room, known locally as The Vault, can be found the world's first solar cell. And that beat-up little notebook holds the scribblings of none other than Thomas A. Watson, the technical brains behind Alexander Graham Bell's ingenious telephone inventions. Here, he captured for the record the first precious words ever spoken by phone: "Mr. Watson! Come here! I want you!"
IEEE Spectrum asked award-winning photographer Erika Larsen to turn her lens on this extraordinary and wonderfully diverse collection. The result, a captivating photo essay entitled "AT&T's Attic," appears in the March 2007 issue. The objects Larsen documents reveal one of the signature triumphs of the 20th century: the birth and growth of modern telecommunications, from Alexander Graham Bell to the Internet.
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