Anyone remember GTE...?

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Anyone remember GTE before it merged with Bell Atlantic and became Verizon? We need some old-school expertise!

Verizon Communications was created on June 30, 2000 by Bell Atlantic Corp. and GTE Corp., in one of the largest mergers in U.S. business history.

But, at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation we're more interested in the past - and the treasures and mysteries of our deep storage area, the WayBack!

This is where we need some #GTE retirees to give us some insight:

There are three large blue frames with telephone or fiber equipment inside.

They are metal cabinets on castors, and phones on the side of each. It looks like it was a telephone switching display of some kind. We've found no records in the archives of what it is and where it's from.

One has a screen and a clear GTE logo, and all three look to be about 1980s technology that bridges traditional telephone switching and early fiber optics (maybe?).

We've also found a display board with the following description:

"Welcome to the GTE Laboratories Burst Switching Exhibit at the Charles River Museum.

"Pick up a phone, and when you see the four lights attached to your phone-line light up in the display, call the two-digit number of one of the other phones. When the other person picks up the phone that rings, the four lights of that phone-line light up. With both sets of four lights lit, you have a connection between the two phones. The lights and the connection will be established long before you can raise the phone to talk. Try it. Just watch the display, and pick up the ringing phone.

"How many words can you say in one breath? Those words are a "burst" of speech. Normally we breathe 12 times per minute. Everyone's "speech bursts" are in those average 12 breaths. With 256 talkers, this switching unit can, on average, send three persons' voices on the same path, or channel, between their breathing intervals.

"This equipment switches data, too. Like voice signals, data also has bursty characteristics caused, for example, by the way we type. The bursts of data are switched between the voice bursts and other bursts of data. Such data bursts are referred to as "packets." The classic packet switch stores each packet burst for a short interval before sending it forward. This burst switch switches directly through the network without that packet delay.

"AT&T has developed a "fast packet" switch that also switches bursts, and further development during the 1980's resulted in a communication standard called Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), which switches bursts of information.

"But these two switches with the display attached, and the original blue rack on the right, were the first ATM switches in the world of telecommunications. GTE provides advanced telecommunications services throughout the United States and other parts of the world."

Can these be made to work again???

Digging into some Curtiss-Wright history

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It would be hard to find a company with deeper history than Curtiss-Wright Corporation, and we've got some early pieces of that story right here at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation.

Deep in our archives, we have a tremendous amount of material related to the first years of the aviation industry. Much of it was part of the WH Nichols collection, as the company started by William H. Nichols here in Waltham manufactured key components for both civilian and defense aircraft. We have blueprints, airfoil calculations, documents relating to the Experimental Air Service of the US military, schematics from the University of Toronto, and correspondence with Curtiss-Wright Corporation.

Locally, Charles Metz of the Waltham Manufacturing Company had manufactured bicycles, motorcycles, and brass-era cars, and by 1911 was hosting an aerodrome show from his headquarters, Gore Place.

Much of that dates from the 1910s and 1920s, some of the earliest days of aviation innovation. Here are a few samples - we’re hoping some folks from Curtiss-Wright might shed more insight on the people and items being discussed in this exchange of letters from the 1920s. Mr. K. M. Lane of Wright Aeronautical Corporation writes to WH Nichols to request "two duralumin Clark "Y" airfoils..." on March 25, 1925. We'd love to know more about the identity of Mr. Lane, and the exact airfoil model he's asking to have made for his purpose.

Another letter is from "Phil" of Wright Aeronautical to C. F. Taylor over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s MIT School of Engineering. He writes to "Fay" on April 22, 1927,

"As you requested, I am enclosing the following drawings of our adjustable connecting rod made from the D-1 forging...

The work is progressing on the barrels with various styles of fins, and we hope to be able to ship them sometime next week. In this connection, we believe that a test of these fins with the air, striking at an angle to the fins will be interesting as this may change the relative heat participation to some extent."

This is what innovation looks like in real time - and shows the nexus of academic research, defense, and the private sector all working together on new technological advancement.

This is just a small subset of the vast aviation history represented in our collection, and we're eager to connect with companies and organizations interested in adding context, and sharing in this century of technological innovation it reveals.