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From: djcl@contact.uucp (woody)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: The Phone Book
Message-ID: <12711@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 90 04:14:43 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 688, Message 5 of 10


Here are a few items contained in J Edward Hyde's _The_Phone_Book_, a
tome that exposes pre-MFJ, pre-divestiture Bell System:

* billing punch cards: in the good old days when punch cards were sent
with the phone bills, there was some creative carving done to those cards.
In one case, a customer cut a few holes in one of those cards. The result
was free phone service indefinitely. However, someone else did a few
slices to the card, only to wind up paying for 387 red phones instead of
a single black one.

* The story of T.O. Gravitt, a Southwestern Bell Texas Operations
Chief who decided not to play by the rules of the big boys and started
on a reform program. Unfortunately, Gravitt found himself persecuted
and eventually committed suicide. Much of the information on this
section of the book came from James Ashley, from a 1975 interview. In
Gravitt's suicide note contained the words "Watergate is a gnat
compared to the Bell System."

* {Ramparts Magazine} printed instructions on how to build a "mute
box" (something to suppress call supervision on incoming long distance
calls).  While Ramparts was in rather illegal territory with that
article, the actions Ma Bell took were probably the issue here. Bell
agents were ordered to find all extant copies of the offending
{Ramparts Magazine}, trying to get the subscription lists, going after
newsstand dealers, threatening any radio stations that mentioned the
action, etc.

* A group of Miami students set up phone service under the name S.E.
Bass; meetings were scheduled with the Bell reps at the end of a pier
and at Marineland when the question of the bill's non-payment came up
(the intent was to meet this fictitious "S.E. Bass"). Several months
later, Bell discovered that the previous residence was the Gulf Stream
and the occupation: a mantelpiece.