【文章标题】：From Hookswitch to Grave
【文章标题】：从电话机到坟墓
【文章正文】：
from hookswitch to grave
从电话机到坟墓
Through decades of consolidation, reorganization, and divestiture, AT&T left a famously complicated corporate history.
经过数十年的整合、重组和剥离，AT&T留下了一段极其复杂的企业历史。
One of the greatest enterprises in American history, arguably the greatest enterprise, AT&T has often rivaled the federal government in the size of its budget and workforce.
作为美国历史上最伟大的企业之一（甚至可以说是最伟大的企业），AT&T的预算规模和员工数量常与联邦政府相匹敌。
One of the reasons, as we well know today, was monopolization and its close relative vertical integration.
如今我们深知，原因之一在于垄断及其近亲——垂直整合。
AT&T was the telephone system, or at least aspired to be, and for decades the meaning of “Universal Service” was that the service was designed, built, and operated by AT&T—universally.
AT&T就是电话系统本身，或者说至少渴望如此。数十年来，“普遍服务”的含义就是：这项服务由AT&T全权设计、建造和运营——无处不在。
While AT&T’s tangled origins are fertile ground for the historian, they also obscure many of the early stories of telephone history.
尽管AT&T错综复杂的起源为历史学家提供了丰富素材，却也掩盖了电话史上许多早期故事。
Much of the work of the early independent telephone industry has been lost in the voluminous achievements of AT&T.
早期独立电话行业的诸多成果，早已湮没在AT&T浩如烟海的成就中。
Even very basic facts become obscure. For example, who invented the telephone?
甚至连最基础的事实也变得模糊。例如：电话是谁发明的？
Well, we all know the answer: Alexander Graham Bell.
好吧，我们都知道答案：亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔。
We have mostly forgotten that, at the time, this was a hotly contested question.
我们大多已忘记，这在当时是个激烈争议的问题。
One of the most prominent alternate claimants to the title was a man named Elisha Gray, today immortalized as the “Gray” in electrical distributor “Graybar,” but better known in his time as an inventor of telegraph and telephone equipment.
最著名的竞争者之一是以利沙·格雷——如今因电气分销商”Graybar”中的”Gray”而被铭记，但在当时他更以电报和电话设备发明家的身份闻名。
Gray contracted prototyping of some of his inventions to an upstart manufacturer and de facto Western Union spinoff, founded by Enos M. Barton (the “bar” in Graybar) and George Shawk.
格雷将部分发明的原型制作外包给一家新兴制造商（实质上是西部联盟的分支），该公司由伊诺斯·M·巴顿（Graybar中的”bar”）和乔治·肖克创立。
Impressed by Barton’s operation, and at odds with Shawk on its future direction, Gray put together the money to buy out Shawk and became half-owner of the company that would reincorporate, in 1872, as Western Electric (WE).
格雷对巴顿的运营印象深刻，但与肖克在公司未来发展方向上存在分歧。他筹集资金买断肖克的股份，成为这家公司的半数所有者——该公司于1872年重组为西部电子（WE）。
It is ironic, of course, that a man who might fairly be called one of the top enemies of Bell helped to found the company that would become one of the most important parts of the Bell System.
颇具讽刺的是，这位堪称贝尔头号对手之一的人物，却协助创立了日后成为贝尔系统最重要组成部分的公司。
It’s not a coincidence: Gray’s involvement in WE included plans to manufacture his own telephone design, for which he had filed a provisional patent.
这并非巧合：格雷参与WE时，计划生产自己设计的电话机——他已为此提交了临时专利。
Like many of the late 20th century’s telephone inventors, Gray’s greatest challenge in commercializing his invention was not technical but legal.
与20世纪末许多电话发明家类似，格雷将发明商业化的最大挑战并非技术，而是法律。
His provisional patent on a telephone transmitter, substantially similar to the one invented by Bell and possibly older, led Western Union to take part ownership in WE to advance their own plan to compete with AT&T as a telephone company.
他关于电话送话器的临时专利（与贝尔发明高度相似且可能更早）促使西部联盟取得WE的部分所有权，以推进其作为电话公司与AT&T竞争的计划。
That set off a protracted legal battle, whose end result included the termination of Gray’s patent claim and Western Union’s abandonment of telephony.
由此引发了一场旷日持久的法律战，最终结果包括格雷专利主张的终止，以及西部联盟退出电话业务。
AT&T was not the kind of company to leave things to chance, though, and least of all when it came to competition.
但AT&T绝非听天由命的公司，尤其在竞争问题上。
In 1881, AT&T acquired WE. From that point on, WE was no longer a competitor, it was a core part of the Bell System: the manufacturing and supply arm of AT&T.
1881年，AT&T收购了WE。从此WE不再是竞争者，而成为贝尔系统的核心部分——AT&T的制造与供应部门。
A few decades later, WE had become the primary maker, and often sole supplier, of every piece of equipment used in the Bell telephone network.
几十年后，WE已成为贝尔电话网络所有设备的主要制造商（且常是唯一供应商）。
Everything from telephones to cables to central office switches were made at WE’s various works.
从电话机到电缆，再到中心局交换机，所有设备皆产自WE的各个工厂。
What few components WE didn’t make, it sourced, through an expansive purchasing arm that negotiated orders on the behalf of the entire AT&T family.
WE不生产的少数组件，则通过代表整个AT&T家族的庞大采购部门进行采购。
In 1925, WE had become so dedicated to the Bell System that its remaining non-telephone business, mostly local distributorships, was spun out into a separate company (Graybar).
到1925年，WE已完全专注于贝尔系统，其剩余的非电话业务（主要是本地分销）被剥离成立独立公司（Graybar）。
From that point forward, the Bell System was not only WE’s sole shareholder but its sole customer as well.
自此，贝尔系统不仅是WE的唯一股东，也是其唯一客户。
As part of the 1925 reorganization, WE’s research and development arm became a new organization, jointly owned by WE and its patron AT&T: Bell Laboratories.
作为1925年重组的一部分，WE的研发部门成为新机构——由WE及其母公司AT&T共同拥有的贝尔实验室。
This new organization consolidated AT&T’s expanding basic science efforts with WE’s manufacturing expertise, setting the stage for decades of equipment that was conceived, designed, manufactured, and used within the AT&T empire.
这个新机构将AT&T不断扩展的基础科学研究与WE的制造专长相结合，为未来数十年AT&T帝国内部构想、设计、制造和使用的设备奠定了基础。
Bell operating companies got everything they needed, from tools to the telephones themselves, via requisition to their local WE supply warehouse.
贝尔运营公司通过向当地WE供应仓库申领，获得从工具到电话机的一切所需。
Such were the needs of the growing telephone system that WE started manufacturing telephone cable in 1925, quickly became the world’s largest manufacturer of wire and cable, and likely held that title continuously until the turn-down of much of its manufacturing capacity in the late 1970s.
蓬勃发展的电话系统需求如此巨大，WE于1925年开始生产电话电缆，迅速成为全球最大线缆制造商，并可能一直保持该头衔直至1970年代末大部分产能关闭。
AT&T was the nation’s largest private employer for much of this period, and WE accounted for about 1/6th of that workforce.
在此期间的大部分时间里，AT&T是美国最大的私营雇主，而WE约占其员工总数的六分之一。
Until the Carterfone decision and, for the most part, until the divestiture of AT&T in 1984, telephones were born at Western Electric.
直到卡特丰案裁决（很大程度上直至1984年AT&T解体前），电话机都诞生于西部电子。
All of the phones leased by Bell Operating Companies, ranging from the classic WE 500 to explosion-proof phones for coal mine applications, were made at WE facilities like the Indianapolis Works.
贝尔运营公司租赁的所有电话——从经典的WE 500到煤矿用防爆电话——皆产自WE的工厂（如印第安纳波利斯工厂）。
There were nearly 10,000 employees there, making 35,000 phones a day—and Indianapolis was not remarkable. It was just one plant of many.
该厂有近万名员工，日产3.5万台电话机——而印第安纳波利斯厂并不特殊，它只是众多工厂中的一个。
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