The Bell System Technical Journal from volume 1 issue 1 in July 1922 to the final issue published in December 1983, is now on-line for free.
It is most famous for Claude Shannon’s paper “A mathematical theory of communication” which founded the field of information theory. Also important are the two Unix-themed issues that appeared in 1978 and 1984, containing many landmark papers from the system’s developers.
The scientific discoveries produced by Bell System research and engineering were critical to the evolution of global telecommunications and had a considerable impact on our daily lives.
Captain Crunch found the tones for this “blue box” in a November, 1954 article entitled, “In-Band Single-Frequency Signaling”, which enabled him to call anywhere for free.
A toy whistle, packaged in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal could emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz—the same frequency that was used by AT&T long lines to indicate that a trunk line was ready and available to route a new call.
