This advertisement is from 1965. The text of the ad is reprinted below:

There are 3,000 'bits' of information on this page

Dots like these are part of an amazing electronic memory that can store, in binary language, 5.8 million "bits" of information. Such a memory unit is a fundamental part of the complex new Electronic Switching System that Western Electric is building for the Bell System.

The dots are precisely 35 thousandths of an inch square and one thousandth thick. They are etched from magnetic material bonded to a thin aluminum sheet. One hundred and twenty-eight of these aluminum sheets are next placed into a module containing microscopic thin wires embedded in thin plastic to make a complete memory unit.

This is merely one measure of the complexity of electronic switching. A typical system requires more than half a million other tiny components, such as transistors. Each of them must meet rigid standards of quality during manufacture. Only then can they be assembled into units that will work perfectly with every other of the billions of components that make up the nationwide Bell System communications network.

As the manufacturing and supply unit of the Bell System, we share the goal of bringing you continual progress in communications. Electronic switching—developed by Bell Laboratories, built by Western Electric, operated by Bell telephone companies—is another giant step toward ever-better, low cost communications.

Western Electric
Manufacturing & Supply Unit of the Bell System

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