This book was discussed a while ago and some people indicated an interest in obtaining it.
I was wondering if those interested did get a copy and what they thought of it.
I think it's an excellent reference and answer to many of the historical questions that come up in the newsgroup. It not only describes what the Bell System developed, but the background and why's and how's for a particular product and service. It has good footnotes so someone interested in more detail can look them up in a good engineering library.
The book also has lessons for us today. While electronics has made components and trunks incredibly cheaper than in the past, 'cheap' is not 'free', and resources are still limited. Further, we load so much more information on a channel, such as high-fidelity audio transmissions or complex video signals over the Internet. (A 2400 baud modem was fine for me to access BBS's since it was all text and it doesn't take much to send a whole page of text. But once fancy graphics, animation, full size documents, and pictures were available, much faster speeds were necessary. To this day we must be careful what we download lest we overrun even modern high capacity connections. Anyway, the book was written in a time when trunks and switches were still very expensive and care had to be taken to provide enough capacity to meet demand, but not waste capacity either. Care also had to be taken to spread the load evenly onto trunks and switches to prevent mechanical wear or congestion.