5963 computer grade dual triode production dates 3497

It was *nothing* to do radio equipment routines (on non-WECo designed radios) and replace 2-300 tubes in one day. Of course *most* of them sold for a dollar or two, not the prices you mentioned for 310s etc. But by the same token, I used to toss specially selected 416B gold plated planar triodes (WA6280) by the bushel too, and those must have cost $200 each. (I worked on tropo sites, and also tossed, individually, $7000 klystron tubes too...)

As you noted quite accurately, WECo designed equipment was often turned down 30-40 years later with some of the original tubes still working! (Except of course in 43A1 terminal units and X type SF units! What a pain those were...)

...

I sympathize with your feelings, but can't agree with what you say.

I worked at small places. But the ratio of circuits to people was about the same. There was a time when each technician on shift might cover for 200-300 circuits or so. Then it became 2000, and kept going up.

Today AT&T covers whole regions with a handful of people, and I have no way to calculate a ratio of circuits to techs that relates to what we had 40 years ago.

But I *can* tell you what the difference is! Long distance today costs less than a penny per minute. The actual bill that we pay for a long distance call still has more to do with the cost of local telephone service than any other single factor. And we have the Internet (which is transported on the same long distance facilities that voice calls are).

To put it mildly, the transformation that modern telecommunications technology has brought to the world in the last 40 years has had more to do with *improving* the quality (and length) of life for the people who have access to it (the industrialized world) than any other single cause.

Which probably means that without it, you and I would by now be dead an buried rather than alive, healthy, and kicking on Usenet!

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