This advertisement is from 1963. The text of the ad is reprinted below:
What is the Bell System?
The Bell System is cables and radio relay and laboratories and manufacturing plants and local operating companies and millions of telephones in every part of the country.
The Bell System is people... hundreds of thousands of employees and more than two million men and women who have invested their savings in the business.
It is more than that.
The Bell System is an idea.
It is an idea that starts with the policy of providing you with the best possible communications services at the lowest possible price. But desire is not enough. Bright dreams and high hopes need to be brought to earth and made to work.
You could have all the equipment and still not have the service you know today.
You could have all the separate parts of the Bell System and not have the benefits of all those parts fitted together in a nationwide whole.
It’s the time-proved combination of re search, manufacturing and operations in one organization -- with close teamwork between all three -- that results in good service, low cost, and constant improvements in the scope and usefulness of your telephone.
No matter whether it is one of the many tasks of everyday operation -- or the special skills needed to invent the transistor, the solar battery, or, with Telstar, to pioneer space communication -- the Bell System has the will and the way to get it done.
And a spirit of courtesy and service which has come to be a most important part of the Bell System idea.
BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM
American Telephone & Telegraph Company • Bell Telephone Laboratories • Western Electric Company • New England Telephone & Telegraph Company • The Southern New England Telephone Company • New York Telephone Company • New Jersey Bell Telephone Company • The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania • The Diamond State Telephone Company The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Companies . Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Company • The Ohio Bell Telephone Company • The Cincinnati & Suburban Bell Telephone Company • Michigan Bell Telephone Company • Indiana Bell Telephone Company • Wisconsin Telephone Company • Illinois Bell Telephone Company • Northwestern Bell Telephone Company • Southwestern Bell Telephone Company • The Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company • The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company • Bell Telephone Company of Nevada • Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company