"Hello London"

"Hello London". . , The Pole Farm was the outcome of experiments by AT&T Bell Labs scientists using radio shortwave to transmit telephone calls to other parts of the world. On June 1, 1929, radiomen in Lawrenceville connected with London, England, making it possible for a commercial telephone customer in North America to call a friend or relative in Europe for the first time. A few months later, service was inaugurated to Buenos Aires in South America. ,
Why Lawrenceville? , AT&T had very specific criteria for locating its transmission station, and Lawrenceville was chosen as the best site to meet those criteria. The site had to be relatively flat with space for the nearly mile-long antenna array. Preferably the site would be somewhere along the main telephone cable between New York City and Philadelphia, and it had to be at least 45 miles from the receiving station in Netcong, New Jersey, near the AT&T Bell Labs., Every antenna in the shortwave radiotelephone system had to be oriented to send, or receive in only one direction. Furthermore, receiving and transmitting stations had to be far apart from one another to create an interference free path. This meant there had to be a total of four stations, with a receiver and transmitter on each end of every conversation. Lawrenceville’s antennas could communicate in only one direction. They could send signals but not receive them., AT&T's land agents scouted out sites, and in August 1928, purchased 15 tracts of farmland in Lawrence and Hopewell Townships, totaling 820 acres. Construction began almost immediately on the antennas, access roads that now form parts of the LHT, and two substantial, two-story, brick and concrete buildings known as Building One and Building Two., The Tower Arrays The first antennas at the Pole Farm were supported by 180-foot-tall steel towers. In plan, the towers were laid out in the shape of a large backwards “L”. The long leg formed the London Tower Array and the short leg formed the Buenos Aires Tower Array., The towers supported 500-foot-wide, vertically oriented, steel-mesh curtains, the actual antennas, which could be raised and lowered to focus the shortwave beam on its target receiver. These antennas were called Sterba antennas after their inventor, Ernest Sterba, a Bell Labs scientist., The London Tower Array was longer because it supported three circuits and the Buenos Aires Tower Array supported only one circuit. The total cost of building the transmission station was slightly over $2 million. It was an incredible investment for a system that could only carry a total of four individual phone calls at a time. Within a few years, AT&T scientists would develop a new antenna layout, called rhombic, which was capable of handling hundreds of circuits., “Please Wait While I Connect Your Call” , When the Pole Farm opened in 1929, an international phone call was incredibly expensive, but hearing the voice of a friend or loved one from overseas was possible for the first time. Prior to this, people had to send telegrams or wait weeks for letters., Arranging an international phone call took about 30 minutes. There was no direct dial. If you wanted to contact someone in London, you called your local operator who in turn contacted AT&T’s international operator in New York City. That operator then contacted the radiomen in Lawrenceville who made contact with the radiomen in London, who in turn called a London operator to ring and connect the person receiving the call. Then in reverse, the operators and radiomen would verify that the call was connected and the signal quality was good. Finally, your local operator would ring you back saying “Your party is now on the line.”, ( captions ) , , The L-shaped plan of the tower arrays is clear in this photo, c. 1929-1930. The shorter line in the foreground was the Buenos Aires line. , , Blueprint plan for the Lawrenceville station, c. 1929. , , The towers of the London array, c. 1929-1930.