Were there not also some government-imposed rules on bookkeeping as part of the regulated monopoly? Seems like I heard they were required to depreciate equipment over a long period of time, 20 or 40 years. That made sense when the technology was not changing rapidly - plain old dial phones and SXS and other electromechanical switching. New telephones were introduced to improve transmission, rather than for style.
Then when electronic switching technology came along it swept away all that had preceded it. And the first generation of electronic switching, with transistors, was quickly swept away by the generation using integrated circuits, and then using microprocessors. You couldn't afford not to upgrade, and yet the equipment you had just paid for a few years earlier was a long way from being fully depreciated on the books.
I just wonder if W.U. was not hammered pretty hard from putting in the original AUTODIN with transistor-based computer switching technology, and then having to replace essentially all the switching center hardware with more modern stuff. They got about five years life out of the original switching centers, and even that was long for a generation in the computer industry at the time. So I wonder if they were fully paid for the equipment that was obsoleted.
Under the regulated system the rates were set to allow the company to make a a profit and write the the cost and operation. When deregulation hit, the rules changed a lot, you had above and below the line rates; regulated/non regulated and then keeping the books was a mess. I know when we put equipment in we had to charge work/job hours to work orders and then to make sure if it was above or below the line. Our managers used to do the time, then we got to do it as well a set the amount of hours it took to put the systems in; we in a matter of fact bid to do the jobs. I spend most of my time doing installation and never worried on how long it took. I then got a awaking when I was put in charge of a new crew whole lost their lead and by the time I got there the job had sunk. Taught them how to do the job right though. Maybe we should go back to SXS and regulated systems.
Actually, the Bell System put a great deal of effort into the visual image of a telephone set, using premier designers to come up with a design that was both attractive to the user and functional for the company.
New designs were offered at a premium price. The 202 'handset' telephone was an option over the candlestick phone in the early days. Colored phones were extra. In the 1960s Trimline and Princess phones were extra.
The regulators liked these premium offerings because they helped the cross subsidization and kept the entry price of bare bones basic phone service low.
I don't know for sure, but I suspect this rapid writedown surprised Bell System officials who were used to thinking in terms of decades for the life of a switch. But in some cases they did have to upgrade because otherwise they'd need more floor space for more capacity. Also, a removed switch might not have been retired, but sent somewhere else. (At the end SxS and crossbar gear was scrapped).
I suspect you are correct.
My own 'gut feeling' is that WU management and engineers were a rather conservative lot and when early renewal was required they were not at all happy about it, perhaps resistant to the idea. I don't know that much about AUTODIN in terms of its capability when new and the industry state of the art in that era.
Actually five years is a bit short for computer gear, I've seen plenty of equipment in that era in service for ten years. Big flashy organizations get the latest and greatest, but smaller less wealthy 'back road' organizations can't afford that luxury and make use of cast off "hand me downs". For instance, when IBM replaced its 1401 computer by System/360, it sold the 1401s to non-profits (like my employers) for a big discount. Then when the 1401s were physically worn out (after say 12 years of service), they were replaced by second- hand System/360s which had been displaced by new System/370s.
A computer usually doesn't "die", but rather it has troubles and its worthiness depends on how frequent the troubles are and how easily they are fixed. My employer had an old 1401 which they were perfectly happy with. But from time to time there was a hardware fault, and eventually fixing the fault (e.g. finding a replacement card) took too much time, so the 1401 was scrapped.
Of course, in the case of IBM, there were 10,000 1401s out there so spare parts were probably plentiful for many years, and likewise for the System/360. Perhaps the hardware WU used for AUTODIN was more unique and not as easy to get parts for. Maybe that caught WU mgmt off guard, they couldn't use an experience craftsman and a needle- nosed pliars to fix it, as was done on earlier switching boxes.
Could you elaborate on when AUTODIN was in service and what it did? Thanks!
I remember when I worked at Brown University back in the early 90's. The area around the school has numerous 2 hour and 3 hour parking on the street so every day between 10:30AM and 11:30AM you'd find almost every office on campus empty because it was parking shuffle time.
There was parking on campus but some of it was a mile or more away from most offices and they charged a pretty penny to park there.
So every day when everyone arrived for work we'd all say where we were parked to make it easier to play the parking shuffle.
I attended Wilfred Laurier University (in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) and there was so little on-campus parking that the streets near the campus were also de facto short term parking. One day while grumbling about how far from my lecture I had to park I saw someone wearing a Michigan Wolverines jacket getting out of a car. I recall the scene because my first thought was, "Wow, and I thought OUR parking situation was bad!"
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