Neither chance nor mere good fortune has brought this nation the finest telephone service in the world. Americans enjoy this service as a result of their own enterprise and common sense.

The people of this nation have found more and more ways to use the telephone in their daily lives. They have encouraged initiative and invention. They have made the job of providing telephone service a public trust. At the same time, they have given the telephone companies, under regulation, the freedom and resources to do their job as well as possible.

In this climate of freedom and responsibility, the Bell telephone companies have provided service of steadily increasing value. And the quality of service has been steadily improved.

In the years since World War II, the public demand for service has been so great that the Bell System has carried out the most extensive construction program ever undertaken in so short a time by any single enterprise. The people of America made this program possible. Since the war, and through 1954, they have invested about seven billion dollars of their savings in Bell System securities, and this money has been used to construct new telephone buildings, buy new equipment, and extend service.

Now, some ten years after the war, the term “extend service” means much more than being able to provide a telephone for those who want it. Today, the telephone in America has gained many new dimensions as the Bell System offers more and more things to meet the wants of the American people—things that add even more variety and convenience to its service. Telephones in attractive colors that blend or contrast with any decorative scheme; telephones with illuminated dials that can be seen in the dark; telephones with push buttons to answer as many as six lines; equipment that will automatically answer calls when no one is in, and give and take recorded messages—these are only a few of many.

Bell System men and women, with experience and skill, backed by the great flexibility of their communications network, are writing the story of steadily improving telephone service—a story that will have no ending.

Printed in U.S.A. 8-55