Abstract
THE fourth of the “Green Papers“issued by the Post Office contains a lecture by E. S. Byng to the P.O. Telephone and Telegraph Society read on January 15, 1934. He points out that the outstanding success of telephone development in the United States is attributed in some measure to the close working arrangement between the operating and manufacturing departments of the business. In the Bell system, the various operating companies and manufacturing associations are controlled by the American Telegraph and Telephone Co. In Great Britain, the State, as owner of the whole system, does not attempt to manufacture to any appreciable extent. The production of the necessary materials and plant is rightly entrusted to industrial companies. By mutual co-operation and understanding, the Post Office and the manufacturers should be able to operate in much the same way as a single organisation. Of recent years, after work has been begun on a contract, engineers rarely ask for changes to be incorporated. Inspection in a factory may be likened to a running commentary on manufacture, as the inspection includes observing, reporting and criticising. It varies from so little as 2 per cent to 100 per cent of the total goods manufactured. Some processes call for continual vigilance, while others have mechanical safeguards against inaccurate performance. The telephone dial alone consists of nearly seventy ‘piece’ parts each of which must be checked for accuracy of forming and its dimensions gauged between the maximum and minimum limits. In succeeding stages, the tensions of the springs are measured, the dimensions to the thousandths of an inch and the speed of operation to thousandths of a second.
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Communications and the Manufacturer. Nature 135, 867 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135867a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135867a0