This advertisement is from 1957. The text of the ad is reprinted below:

What's up?

Well, the wires are. And soon the dial switching equipment will be up too as these Western Electric installers transform the confusion here into the orderly scene you'd expect in a Bell telephone central office.

Those dangling cables with their thousands of wires are pre-cut to the right length so that each one will meet the right spot in the 11½ foot high banks of complex dial equipment -- some 300 tons of it -- now on the way here from our factories. Planning ahead this way, getting the wire network all in place while the machines themselves are still in production, saves weeks of time in making this Bell telephone central office ready for its work of switching phone calls around town or around the country when people twirl the dials.

An efficient way to do things? Yes. And this is one more example of how Western Electric, as the manufacturing and supply unit of the Bell System strives always to find the best way, the most efficient way, the least costly way to help your Bell telephone company bring you good, dependable, low-in-cost telephone service.

Western Electric
Manufacturing and Supply Unit of the Bell System

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