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121-575: Cincinnati Bell was founded in 1873 as a telegraph company and for much of its history was a Bell System franchisee. In the 1990s, Cincinnati Bell expanded into Internet access and mobile phone services. The company divested its mobile phone service in 2014 to focus on enterprise and fiber-optic services. It was acquired in September 2021 by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets , and began doing business as Altafiber in March 2022. Cincinnati Bell

242-567: A diplomatic cable , is a confidential communication between a diplomatic mission and the foreign ministry of its parent country. These continue to be called telegrams or cables regardless of the method used for transmission. Passing messages by signalling over distance is an ancient practice. One of the oldest examples is the signal towers of the Great Wall of China . In 400 BC , signals could be sent by beacon fires or drum beats . By 200 BC complex flag signalling had developed, and by

363-879: A fiber-optic communications (Internet, telephone, and IPTV ) service called Fioptics , similar to the U-verse service offered by AT&T and the FiOS service offered by Verizon Communications . Cincinnati Bell's Fioptics provides Internet at speeds from 5 Mbit/s up to 2 Gbit/s to over 500,000 homes in the Cincinnati metropolitan area . The availability is limited to areas wired for Fioptics, and other Fioptics services are not required. In areas now covered by Fioptics, Cincinnati Bell no longer offers ADSL-only speeds greater than 5 Mbit/s. As of 2019, Cincinnati Bell's fiber optic network extends nearly 16,500 route miles (26,600 km). In 2011, Cincinnati Bell became

484-453: A code by itself. The term heliostat is sometimes used as a synonym for heliograph because of this origin. The Colomb shutter ( Bolton and Colomb , 1862) was originally invented to enable the transmission of morse code by signal lamp between Royal Navy ships at sea. The heliograph was heavily used by Nelson A. Miles in Arizona and New Mexico after he took over command (1886) of

605-410: A distance and cablegram means something written via a cable, whereas telegraph implies the process of writing at a distance. Later, a Telex was a message sent by a Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network. A wirephoto or wire picture was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph . A diplomatic telegram, also known as

726-470: A distance of a quarter of a mile. In the 1890s inventor Nikola Tesla worked on an air and ground conduction wireless electric power transmission system , similar to Loomis', which he planned to include wireless telegraphy. Tesla's experiments had led him to incorrectly conclude that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy and his 1901 large scale application of his ideas,

847-473: A few days, sometimes taking all day to send a message despite the use of the highly sensitive mirror galvanometer developed by William Thomson (the future Lord Kelvin ) before being destroyed by applying too high a voltage. Its failure and slow speed of transmission prompted Thomson and Oliver Heaviside to find better mathematical descriptions of long transmission lines . The company finally succeeded in 1866 with an improved cable laid by SS Great Eastern ,

968-424: A high-voltage wireless power station, now called Wardenclyffe Tower , lost funding and was abandoned after a few years. Telegraphic communication using earth conductivity was eventually found to be limited to impractically short distances, as was communication conducted through water, or between trenches during World War I. Bell System The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by

1089-555: A message was relayed 640 km (400 mi) in four hours. Miles' enemies used smoke signals and flashes of sunlight from metal, but lacked a sophisticated telegraph code. The heliograph was ideal for use in the American Southwest due to its clear air and mountainous terrain on which stations could be located. It was found necessary to lengthen the morse dash (which is much shorter in American Morse code than in

1210-493: A modification of surveying equipment ( Gauss , 1821). Various uses of mirrors were made for communication in the following years, mostly for military purposes, but the first device to become widely used was a heliograph with a moveable mirror ( Mance , 1869). The system was used by the French during the 1870–71 siege of Paris , with night-time signalling using kerosene lamps as the source of light. An improved version (Begbie, 1870)

1331-606: A natural rubber from the Palaquium gutta tree, after William Montgomerie sent samples to London from Singapore in 1843. The new material was tested by Michael Faraday and in 1845 Wheatstone suggested that it should be used on the cable planned between Dover and Calais by John Watkins Brett . The idea was proved viable when the South Eastern Railway company successfully tested a three-kilometre (two-mile) gutta-percha insulated cable with telegraph messages to

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1452-552: A new logo in 2016. Cincinnati Bell's conventional telecommunications services are concentrated in markets where its subsidiaries have historically enjoyed incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) status. Since the 1870s, Cincinnati Bell Telephone has been the ILEC within a radius of approximately 25 miles (40 km) from downtown Cincinnati . As of 2019, the three-state territory consists of: Beyond its ILEC territory, Cincinnati Bell Telephone additionally serves Mason , Lebanon , and

1573-535: A part of the deal, Cincinnati Bell and Cingular secured lower roaming charges on each other's respective GSM networks. On April 7, 2014, Cincinnati Bell announced plans to sell its wireless spectrum and other assets to Verizon Wireless , as part of a planned emphasis on enterprise and entertainment services such as Fioptics. Cincinnati Bell Wireless ended service on February 28, 2015, and the company's retail locations began selling Verizon products. Like other Bell System –affiliated companies, Cincinnati Bell published

1694-542: A post- World War II reconstruction relationship with state-owned Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) before the 1956 boundaries were emplaced. Before 1956, the Bell System's reach was truly gargantuan. Even during the period from 1956 to 1984, the Bell System's dominant reach into all forms of communications was pervasive within the United States and influential in telecommunication standardization throughout

1815-470: A quarter of the company's revenue. Cincinnati Bell provides landline PSTN local and long-distance calling . In recent years, the company has seen subscriptions to these traditional services decline due to competition from cable and wireless providers. Cincinnati Bell offers Internet access to customers in its service area. Its primary competitor for broadband Internet access is Charter Spectrum Internet . In late 2009, Cincinnati Bell started offering

1936-404: A result of this vertical monopoly , the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States by 1940, from local and long-distance service to the telephones. This allowed Bell to prohibit its customers from connecting equipment not made or sold by Bell to the system without paying fees. For example, if a customer desired a style of telephone not leased by the local Bell company,

2057-459: A series of local telephone directories , beginning in 1879. In 2002, it spun off these operations as CBD Media . Cincinnati Bell originally operated a chain of Cincinnati Bell Phone Center locations until 1992, when it sold the retail chain to AT&T . It reentered the retail space in 1998 with three Store@Cincinnati Bell retail locations. As of 2018, the company operates nine Cincinnati Bell Stores. Cincinnati Bell's headquarters are located in

2178-614: A ship off the coast of Folkestone . The cable to France was laid in 1850 but was almost immediately severed by a French fishing vessel. It was relaid the next year and connections to Ireland and the Low Countries soon followed. Getting a cable across the Atlantic Ocean proved much more difficult. The Atlantic Telegraph Company , formed in London in 1856, had several failed attempts. A cable laid in 1858 worked poorly for

2299-401: A single Bell System trademark. For each regional operating company, its name was placed where "name of associated company" appears in this template version of the trademark. Bell system telephones and related equipment were made by Western Electric , a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T Co. Member telephone companies paid a fixed fraction of their revenues as a license fee to Bell Labs . As

2420-440: A single-needle telegraph was adapted to indicate just two messages: "Line Clear" and "Line Blocked". The signaller would adjust his line-side signals accordingly. As first implemented in 1844 each station had as many needles as there were stations on the line, giving a complete picture of the traffic. As lines expanded, a sequence of pairs of single-needle instruments were adopted, one pair for each block in each direction. Wigwag

2541-663: A substantial distance was by Ronalds in 1816 using an electrostatic generator . Ronalds offered his invention to the British Admiralty , but it was rejected as unnecessary, the existing optical telegraph connecting the Admiralty in London to their main fleet base in Portsmouth being deemed adequate for their purposes. As late as 1844, after the electrical telegraph had come into use, the Admiralty's optical telegraph

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2662-418: A system for mass distributing information on current price of publicly listed companies. In a punched-tape system, the message is first typed onto punched tape using the code of the telegraph system—Morse code for instance. It is then, either immediately or at some later time, run through a transmission machine which sends the message to the telegraph network. Multiple messages can be sequentially recorded on

2783-503: A system of communication that would allow the central government to receive intelligence and to transmit orders in the shortest possible time. On 2 March 1791, at 11 am, they sent the message "si vous réussissez, vous serez bientôt couverts de gloire" (If you succeed, you will soon bask in glory) between Brulon and Parce, a distance of 16 kilometres (10 mi). The first means used a combination of black and white panels, clocks, telescopes, and codebooks to send their message. In 1792, Claude

2904-534: A telefax machine. In 1855, an Italian priest, Giovanni Caselli , also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images. Caselli called his invention " Pantelegraph ". Pantelegraph was successfully tested and approved for a telegraph line between Paris and Lyon . In 1881, English inventor Shelford Bidwell constructed the scanning phototelegraph that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing. Around 1900, German physicist Arthur Korn invented

3025-466: A telegraph between St Petersburg and Kronstadt , but it was never completed. The first operative electric telegraph ( Gauss and Weber , 1833) connected Göttingen Observatory to the Institute of Physics about 1 km away during experimental investigations of the geomagnetic field. The first commercial telegraph was by Cooke and Wheatstone following their English patent of 10 June 1837. It

3146-601: A term that referred generally to all AT&T companies, of which there were five major divisions: In 1913, the federal government challenged the Bell System's growing monopoly over the phone system under AT&T ownership in an anti-trust suit, leading to the Kingsbury Commitment . Under the commitment, AT&T escaped break-up or nationalization in exchange for divesting itself of Western Union and allowing non-competing independent telephone companies to interconnect with its long-distance network. After 1934,

3267-465: Is a form of flag signalling using a single flag. Unlike most forms of flag signalling, which are used over relatively short distances, wigwag is designed to maximise the distance covered—up to 32 km (20 mi) in some cases. Wigwag achieved this by using a large flag—a single flag can be held with both hands unlike flag semaphore which has a flag in each hand—and using motions rather than positions as its symbols since motions are more easily seen. It

3388-519: Is a telegraph consisting of a line of stations in towers or natural high points which signal to each other by means of shutters or paddles. Signalling by means of indicator pointers was called semaphore . Early proposals for an optical telegraph system were made to the Royal Society by Robert Hooke in 1684 and were first implemented on an experimental level by Sir Richard Lovell Edgeworth in 1767. The first successful optical telegraph network

3509-458: Is a telegraph machine that can send messages from a typewriter-like keyboard and print incoming messages in readable text with no need for the operators to be trained in the telegraph code used on the line. It developed from various earlier printing telegraphs and resulted in improved transmission speeds. The Morse telegraph (1837) was originally conceived as a system marking indentations on paper tape. A chemical telegraph making blue marks improved

3630-571: Is a telegraph system using reflected sunlight for signalling. It was mainly used in areas where the electrical telegraph had not been established and generally used the same code. The most extensive heliograph network established was in Arizona and New Mexico during the Apache Wars . The heliograph was standard military equipment as late as World War II . Wireless telegraphy developed in the early 20th century became important for maritime use, and

3751-718: Is named CBD Media . The sale marked the first time a former Bell System -affiliated company had sold off its directory operations. In 2003, when BellSouth exited the payphone market, some former BellSouth payphones in Kentucky were sold to Cincinnati Bell. In 2017, Cincinnati Bell acquired Toronto -based OnX Enterprise Solutions for $ 201 million. On July 2, 2018, Cincinnati Bell acquired Hawaiian Telcom Holdco, Inc. , parent of local telephone company Hawaiian Telcom, for $ 650 million. The Hawaiian Telcom acquisition grew Cincinnati Bell's fiber network to over 14,000 route miles (23,000 km). In September 2021, Cincinnati Bell

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3872-447: Is that it permits duplex communication. The Wheatstone tape reader was capable of a speed of 400 words per minute. A worldwide communication network meant that telegraph cables would have to be laid across oceans. On land cables could be run uninsulated suspended from poles. Underwater, a good insulator that was both flexible and capable of resisting the ingress of seawater was required. A solution presented itself with gutta-percha ,

3993-645: The Bildtelegraph widespread in continental Europe especially since a widely noticed transmission of a wanted-person photograph from Paris to London in 1908 used until the wider distribution of the radiofax. Its main competitors were the Bélinographe by Édouard Belin first, then since the 1930s, the Hellschreiber , invented in 1929 by German inventor Rudolf Hell , a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission. The late 1880s through to

4114-536: The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Bell claiming violations of the Sherman Act . In 1982, anticipating that it could not win, AT&T agreed to a Justice Department-mandated consent decree that settled the lawsuit and ordered it to break itself up into seven " Regional Bell Operating Companies " (known as "The Baby Bells"). This ended the existence of

4235-492: The Baby Bells and do not provide telephone service. Beginning in 1991, the Baby Bells began to consolidate operations or rename their Bell Operating Companies according to the parent company name, such as "Bell Atlantic – Delaware, Inc." or "U S WEST Communications, Inc.", to unify their corporate images. The Bell System service marks, including the circled-bell logo, especially as redesigned by Saul Bass in 1969, and

4356-635: The Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of

4477-555: The Dayton metropolitan area through its subsidiary Cincinnati Bell Extended Territories. Hawaiian Telcom , which Cincinnati Bell acquired in 2018, is the ILEC for the entire state of Hawaii . OnX provides enterprise IT solutions in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom. Cincinnati Bell has historically focused on traditional landline service, but in recent decades it has expanded into adjacent communications and entertainment services. As of 2017, legacy voice service makes up only

4598-660: The English Channel (1899), from shore to ship (1899) and finally across the Atlantic (1901). A study of these demonstrations of radio, with scientists trying to work out how a phenomenon predicted to have a short range could transmit "over the horizon", led to the discovery of a radio reflecting layer in the Earth's atmosphere in 1902, later called the ionosphere . Radiotelegraphy proved effective for rescue work in sea disasters by enabling effective communication between ships and from ship to shore. In 1904, Marconi began

4719-583: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assumed regulation of AT&T. Proliferation of telephone service allowed the company to become the largest corporation in the world until its dismantling by the United States Department of Justice in 1984, at which time the Bell System ceased to exist. Receiving a U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone on March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell formed

4840-508: The First Macedonian War . Nothing else that could be described as a true telegraph existed until the 17th century. Possibly the first alphabetic telegraph code in the modern era is due to Franz Kessler who published his work in 1616. Kessler used a lamp placed inside a barrel with a moveable shutter operated by the signaller. The signals were observed at a distance with the newly invented telescope. An optical telegraph

4961-589: The Han dynasty (200 BC – 220 AD) signallers had a choice of lights, flags, or gunshots to send signals. By the Tang dynasty (618–907) a message could be sent 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) in 24 hours. The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) added artillery to the possible signals. While the signalling was complex (for instance, different-coloured flags could be used to indicate enemy strength), only predetermined messages could be sent. The Chinese signalling system extended well beyond

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5082-532: The London and Birmingham Railway line's chief engineer. The messages were for the operation of the rope-haulage system for pulling trains up the 1 in 77 bank. The world's first permanent railway telegraph was completed in July 1839 between London Paddington and West Drayton on the Great Western Railway with an electric telegraph using a four-needle system. The concept of a signalling "block" system

5203-578: The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio awarded Cincinnati Bell Long Distance the right to offer local wireline telephone service in 55 counties outside its incumbent territory and the company began to resell business local phone service in these counties, in competition with incumbent carrier Ameritech . During the 1990s, Cincinnati Bell acquired a nationwide transmission network formerly known as IXC Communications and changed its corporate name to "Broadwing Communications," although

5324-507: The post-World War II occupation was considered an administrative adjunct to the North American Bell System. Immediately before the 1984 break-up, the Bell System had the following corporate structure : On January 1, 1984, the former components of the Bell System were structured into the following Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), which became known as Baby Bells. After 1984, multiple mergers occurred of

5445-641: The telephone . In 1878, it gained exclusive rights to the Bell franchise within a 25-mile (40 km) radius of Cincinnati, becoming the first telephone exchange in Ohio and the tenth in the United States. It has substantially the same three-state incumbent local exchange carrier territory today. On August 21, 1877, it signed its first telephone customer, the Cincinnati Gas-Light and Coke Company (later known as Cincinnati Gas and Electric ). The company

5566-471: The 1850s until well into the 20th century, British submarine cable systems dominated the world system. This was set out as a formal strategic goal, which became known as the All Red Line . In 1896, there were thirty cable-laying ships in the world and twenty-four of them were owned by British companies. In 1892, British companies owned and operated two-thirds of the world's cables and by 1923, their share

5687-530: The 1890s saw the discovery and then development of a newly understood phenomenon into a form of wireless telegraphy , called Hertzian wave wireless telegraphy, radiotelegraphy, or (later) simply " radio ". Between 1886 and 1888, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz published the results of his experiments where he was able to transmit electromagnetic waves (radio waves) through the air, proving James Clerk Maxwell 's 1873 theory of electromagnetic radiation . Many scientists and inventors experimented with this new phenomenon but

5808-661: The Atrium Two building on 4th Street in Downtown Cincinnati . The company's former headquarters and telephone exchange on 7th Street is known as the Cincinnati and Suburban Telephone Company Building . It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. Next door is a data center operated by CyrusOne , a former Cincinnati Bell subsidiary. It originally opened in 1975 as Cincinnati Bell's central Switching Center. Cincinnati Bell owns

5929-488: The Bell System's Caribbean regional operating companies. The consent decree also forced Bell to make all of its patents royalty-free . This led to substantial increases in innovation, in particular in the electronics and computer sectors. Steven Weber 's The Success of Open Source characterizes the consent decree as important in fostering the open source movement. The Bell System also owned various Caribbean regional operating companies, as well as 54% of Japan's NEC and

6050-597: The Bell Telephone Company in 1877, which in 1885 became AT&T. When Bell's original patent expired 15 years later in 1894, the telephone market opened to competition and 6,000 new telephone companies started while the Bell Telephone company took a significant financial downturn. On April 30, 1907, Theodore Newton Vail returned as President of AT&T. Vail believed in the superiority of one national telephone system and AT&T adopted

6171-548: The Bell name and the circled-bell trademark until SBC opted for all of its companies to do business under the "SBC" name in 2002. Bell Atlantic used the Bell name and circled-bell trademark until renaming itself Verizon in 2000. Pacific Bell continued operating in California under that name (or the shortened "PacBell" nickname) until SBC purchased it. In Canada, Bell Canada ( divested from AT&T in 1975) continues to use

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6292-534: The British government followed—by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 km ( 3 + 1 ⁄ 2  mi) across Salisbury Plain . On 13 May 1897, Marconi, assisted by George Kemp, a Cardiff Post Office engineer, transmitted the first wireless signals over water to Lavernock (near Penarth in Wales) from Flat Holm . His star rising, he was soon sending signals across

6413-525: The DOJ had agreed upon in 1956. Before the 1956 break-up, the Bell System included the companies listed below, plus those listed in the pre-1984 section. Northern Electric and the Caribbean regional operating companies were considered part of the Bell System proper before the break-up. Nippon Electric was considered a more distant affiliate of Western Electric, and through its own research and development adapted

6534-715: The Department of Justice in 1913. AT&T committed to sell its $ 30 million in Western Union capital stock, allow competitors to interconnect with its long-distance telephone network, and not acquire other independent companies without permission from the Interstate Commerce Commission . The Bell trademark was used from 1921 through 1969 by both the AT&;T corporation and the regional operating corporations to co-brand themselves under

6655-645: The Great Wall. Signal towers away from the wall were used to give early warning of an attack. Others were built even further out as part of the protection of trade routes, especially the Silk Road . Signal fires were widely used in Europe and elsewhere for military purposes. The Roman army made frequent use of them, as did their enemies, and the remains of some of the stations still exist. Few details have been recorded of European/Mediterranean signalling systems and

6776-466: The Morse system connected Baltimore to Washington , and by 1861 the west coast of the continent was connected to the east coast. The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph , in a series of improvements, also ended up with a one-wire system, but still using their own code and needle displays . The electric telegraph quickly became a means of more general communication. The Morse system was officially adopted as

6897-511: The Northwestern Bell name. In 1984, each regional Bell operating company was assigned a set list of names it was allowed to use in combination with the Bell marks. By 2022, all these Bell System names had disappeared from the United States business landscape. Cincinnati Bell was the last to use the name, until 2022 when it rebranded to Altafiber , though it still has Cincinnati Bell as its corporate name. Southwestern Bell used both

7018-407: The United States and Canada. At the time of the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, it had assets of $ 150 billion (equivalent to $ 440 billion in 2023) and employed over one million people. Beginning in the 1910s, American antitrust regulators had been observing and accusing the Bell System of abusing its monopoly power, and had brought legal action multiple times over the decades. In 1974

7139-634: The assets of its parent, the American Bell Telephone Company. American Bell had created AT&T to provide long-distance calls between New York and Chicago and beyond. AT&T became the parent of American Bell Telephone Company, and thus the head of the Bell System, because regulatory and tax rules were leaner in New York than in Boston, where American Bell was headquartered. Later, the Bell System and its moniker "Ma Bell" became

7260-862: The conglomerate in 1984. The Baby Bells became independent companies and several of them are large corporations today. In 1877, the American Bell Telephone Company, named after Alexander Graham Bell , opened the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut . Within a few years local exchange companies were established in every major city in the United States. Use of the Bell System name initially referred to those early telephone franchises and eventually comprised all telephone companies owned by American Telephone & Telegraph , referred to internally as associated companies , regional holding companies , or later Bell operating companies (BOCs). In 1899, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) acquired

7381-438: The consensus was that these new waves (similar to light) would be just as short range as light, and, therefore, useless for long range communication. At the end of 1894, the young Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi began working on the idea of building a commercial wireless telegraphy system based on the use of Hertzian waves (radio waves), a line of inquiry that he noted other inventors did not seem to be pursuing. Building on

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7502-411: The coordinates of the letter of the alphabet being transmitted. The number of said torches held up signalled the grid square that contained the letter. There is no definite record of the system ever being used, but there are several passages in ancient texts that some think are suggestive. Holzmann and Pehrson, for instance, suggest that Livy is describing its use by Philip V of Macedon in 207 BC during

7623-445: The customer was required to purchase the instrument at cost, furnish it to the telephone company for rewiring, pay a service charge, and a monthly lease fee for using it. In 1949, the United States Department of Justice alleged in an antitrust lawsuit that AT&T and the Bell System operating companies were using their near-monopoly in telecommunications to attempt to establish unfair advantage in related technologies. The outcome

7744-535: The designs of Western Electric's North American telecommunications equipment for use in Japan, which to this day gives much of Japan's telephone equipment and network a closer resemblance to North American ANSI and iconectiv standards than to European-originated ITU-T standards. Before the 1956 break-up, Northern Electric was focused on manufacturing, without significant telecommunication-equipment research & development of its own. The operation of Japan's NTT during

7865-458: The earliest electrical telegraphs. A telegraph message sent by an electrical telegraph operator or telegrapher using Morse code (or a printing telegraph operator using plain text) was known as a telegram. A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable, often shortened to "cable" or "wire". The suffix -gram is derived from ancient Greek: γραμμα ( gramma ), meaning something written, i.e. telegram means something written at

7986-537: The erroneous belief that there was an electrified atmospheric stratum accessible at low altitude. They thought atmosphere current, connected with a return path using "Earth currents" would allow for wireless telegraphy as well as supply power for the telegraph, doing away with artificial batteries. A more practical demonstration of wireless transmission via conduction came in Amos Dolbear 's 1879 magneto electric telephone that used ground conduction to transmit over

8107-415: The extensive definition used by Chappe, Morse argued that the term telegraph can strictly be applied only to systems that transmit and record messages at a distance. This is to be distinguished from semaphore , which merely transmits messages. Smoke signals, for instance, are to be considered semaphore, not telegraph. According to Morse, telegraph dates only from 1832 when Pavel Schilling invented one of

8228-508: The fight against Geronimo and other Apache bands in the Apache Wars . Miles had previously set up the first heliograph line in the US between Fort Keogh and Fort Custer in Montana . He used the heliograph to fill in vast, thinly populated areas that were not covered by the electric telegraph. Twenty-six stations covered an area 320 by 480 km (200 by 300 mi). In a test of the system,

8349-623: The first commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907. Notably, Marconi's apparatus was used to help rescue efforts after the sinking of RMS  Titanic . Britain's postmaster-general summed up, referring to the Titanic disaster, "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi...and his marvellous invention." The successful development of radiotelegraphy

8470-529: The first telecommunications company to also provide retail energy service. Through a partnership with Viridian Energy , Cincinnati Bell Energy competes with several other alternative electricity retailers for the power generation portion of customers' electricity bills. The subsidiary advertises that its service is entirely sourced from National Wind . From 1998 until 2015, Cincinnati Bell Wireless (CBW) offered GSM wireless service in southeastern Indiana , southwestern Ohio , and northwestern Kentucky . It

8591-651: The ground without any wires connecting the stations. Other attempts were made to send the electric current through bodies of water, to span rivers, for example. Prominent experimenters along these lines included Samuel F. B. Morse in the United States and James Bowman Lindsay in Great Britain, who in August 1854, was able to demonstrate transmission across a mill dam at a distance of 500 yards (457 metres). US inventors William Henry Ward (1871) and Mahlon Loomis (1872) developed electrical conduction systems based on

8712-419: The ideas of previous scientists and inventors Marconi re-engineered their apparatus by trial and error attempting to build a radio-based wireless telegraphic system that would function the same as wired telegraphy. He would work on the system through 1895 in his lab and then in field tests making improvements to extend its range. After many breakthroughs, including applying the wired telegraphy concept of grounding

8833-438: The industrialized world. The 1984 Bell System divestiture brought an end to the affiliation branded as the Bell System. It resulted from another antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1974, alleging illegal practices by the Bell System companies to stifle competition in the telecommunications industry. The parties settled the lawsuit on January 8, 1982, superseding the former restrictions that AT&T and

8954-561: The largest ship of its day, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel . An overland telegraph from Britain to India was first connected in 1866 but was unreliable so a submarine telegraph cable was connected in 1870. Several telegraph companies were combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872. Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable at Darwin . From

9075-415: The letter post on price, and competition from the telephone , which removed their speed advantage, drove the telegraph into decline from 1920 onwards. The few remaining telegraph applications were largely taken over by alternatives on the internet towards the end of the 20th century. The word telegraph (from Ancient Greek : τῆλε ( têle ) 'at a distance' and γράφειν ( gráphein ) 'to write')

9196-421: The line at his own expense and agreed that the railway could have free use of it in exchange for the right to open it up to the public. Most of the early electrical systems required multiple wires (Ronalds' system was an exception), but the system developed in the United States by Morse and Vail was a single-wire system. This was the system that first used the soon-to-become-ubiquitous Morse code . By 1844,

9317-521: The local telephone operations continued to operate under the traditional Cincinnati Bell name. The acquisition fell short of expectations due to intense competition and lackluster demand and left Broadwing with over $ 2 billion in debt. In 2004, the holding company divested the long-distance operation as Broadwing Corporation and changed its name back to Cincinnati Bell. In 2002, Cincinnati Bell sold Cincinnati Bell Directory, consisting of its directory operations, to Spectrum Equity. The resulting company

9438-477: The marks on rare occasions to maintain their trademark rights, even less now that they have adopted names conceived long after divestiture. Examples include Verizon, which still used the Bell logo on its trucks and payphones until it updated its own logo in 2015, and Qwest, formerly US West , which licenses the Northwestern Bell and Mountain Bell names to Unical Enterprises, who makes telephones under

9559-624: The modern International Morse code) to aid differentiating from the morse dot. Use of the heliograph declined from 1915 onwards, but remained in service in Britain and British Commonwealth countries for some time. Australian forces used the heliograph as late as 1942 in the Western Desert Campaign of World War II . Some form of heliograph was used by the mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989). A teleprinter

9680-560: The naming rights to the Cincinnati Bell Connector streetcar line that traverses the downtown area. In August 2016, Cincinnati Bell paid $ 3.4 million to rename the line for 10 years. From 2007 to 2014 Cincinnati Bell also sponsored the annual Cincinnati Bell/WEBN Riverfest , one of the largest fireworks displays in the Midwest. Telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where

9801-420: The only former Bell System company that continued to publicly do business under the "Bell" name. In July 2006, Cincinnati Bell removed the final iteration of the Bell logo—designed in 1969 by Saul Bass —from most of its corporate branding, leaving only a stylized wordmark. However, the company continued to use the Bell logo in promotional materials for residential landline and long-distance service until it adopted

9922-416: The operating companies and between them, so that some components of the former Bell System are now owned by companies independent of the historic Bell System, including foreign telecommunications firms. The structure of the companies today is as follows. The following telephone companies are considered independent of the Baby Bells : The following companies were divested after 1984 from AT&T Corp. or

10043-399: The possible messages. One of the few for which details are known is a system invented by Aeneas Tacticus (4th century BC). Tacticus's system had water filled pots at the two signal stations which were drained in synchronisation. Annotation on a floating scale indicated which message was being sent or received. Signals sent by means of torches indicated when to start and stop draining to keep

10164-475: The same i-wireless brand as an unrelated service by locally based Kroger . Cincinnati Bell made its first foray into wireless telephony around 1986, when it acquired a 45% stake in Ameritech Cellular . On February 2, 1998, Cincinnati Bell acquired 80% of AT&T Wireless Services 's new Cincinnati-Dayton PCS network for over $ 100 million. Cincinnati Bell's subsidiary Cincinnati Bell Wireless

10285-419: The same run of tape. The advantage of doing this is that messages can be sent at a steady, fast rate making maximum use of the available telegraph lines. The economic advantage of doing this is greatest on long, busy routes where the cost of the extra step of preparing the tape is outweighed by the cost of providing more telegraph lines. The first machine to use punched tape was Bain's teleprinter (Bain, 1843), but

10406-564: The sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined, so such systems are thus not true telegraphs. The earliest true telegraph put into widespread use

10527-489: The slogan One Policy, One System, Universal Service. This became the company's philosophy for the next 70 years. Under Vail, AT&T began acquiring many of the smaller telephone companies including the Western Union Telegraph Company . In response to the threat of antitrust action from government, AT&T entered into an out-of-court agreement, known as the Kingsbury Commitment with

10648-455: The speed of recording ( Bain , 1846), but was delayed by a patent challenge from Morse. The first true printing telegraph (that is printing in plain text) used a spinning wheel of types in the manner of a daisy wheel printer ( House , 1846, improved by Hughes , 1855). The system was adopted by Western Union . Early teleprinters used the Baudot code , a five-bit sequential binary code. This

10769-579: The standard for continental European telegraphy in 1851 with a revised code, which later became the basis of International Morse Code . However, Great Britain and the British Empire continued to use the Cooke and Wheatstone system, in some places as late as the 1930s. Likewise, the United States continued to use American Morse code internally, requiring translation operators skilled in both codes for international messages. Railway signal telegraphy

10890-462: The synchronisation. None of the signalling systems discussed above are true telegraphs in the sense of a system that can transmit arbitrary messages over arbitrary distances. Lines of signalling relay stations can send messages to any required distance, but all these systems are limited to one extent or another in the range of messages that they can send. A system like flag semaphore , with an alphabetic code, can certainly send any given message, but

11011-559: The system is designed for short-range communication between two persons. An engine order telegraph , used to send instructions from the bridge of a ship to the engine room, fails to meet both criteria; it has a limited distance and very simple message set. There was only one ancient signalling system described that does meet these criteria. That was a system using the Polybius square to encode an alphabet. Polybius (2nd century BC) suggested using two successive groups of torches to identify

11132-619: The system saw only limited use. Later versions of Bain's system achieved speeds up to 1000 words per minute, far faster than a human operator could achieve. The first widely used system (Wheatstone, 1858) was first put into service with the British General Post Office in 1867. A novel feature of the Wheatstone system was the use of bipolar encoding . That is, both positive and negative polarity voltages were used. Bipolar encoding has several advantages, one of which

11253-537: The transmitter and receiver, Marconi was able, by early 1896, to transmit radio far beyond the short ranges that had been predicted. Having failed to interest the Italian government, the 22-year-old inventor brought his telegraphy system to Britain in 1896 and met William Preece , a Welshman, who was a major figure in the field and Chief Engineer of the General Post Office . A series of demonstrations for

11374-445: The two stations to form a complete electrical circuit or "loop". In 1837, however, Carl August von Steinheil of Munich , Germany , found that by connecting one leg of the apparatus at each station to metal plates buried in the ground, he could eliminate one wire and use a single wire for telegraphic communication. This led to speculation that it might be possible to eliminate both wires and therefore transmit telegraph signals through

11495-414: The various resulting 1984 spinoffs, only BellSouth actively used and promoted the Bell name and logo during its entire history, from the 1984 break-up to its reunion with the new AT&T in 2006. Similarly, cessation of using either the Bell name or logo occurred for many of the other companies more than a decade after the 1984 break-up as part of an acquisition-related rebranding. The others have only used

11616-500: The words Bell System in text, were used before January 1, 1984, when the AT&;T divestiture of its regional operating companies took effect. The word mark Bell , the logo, and other related trademarks, are held by each of the remaining Bell companies, namely AT&T, Verizon , CenturyLink , and Altafiber . International rights to the marks, except for Canada , are held by a joint venture of these companies, Bell IP Holdings . Of

11737-848: Was a 1956 consent decree limiting AT&T to 85% of the United States' national telephone network and certain government contracts, and from continuing to hold interests in Canada and the Caribbean . The Bell System's Canadian operations included the Bell Canada regional operating company and the Northern Electric manufacturing subsidiary of the Bell System's Western Electric equipment manufacturer. Western Electric divested Northern Electric in 1956, but AT&T did not divest itself of Bell Canada until 1975. ITT Inc. , then known as International Telephone & Telegraph Co. , purchased

11858-459: Was a competitor to electrical telegraphy using submarine telegraph cables in international communications. Telegrams became a popular means of sending messages once telegraph prices had fallen sufficiently. Traffic became high enough to spur the development of automated systems— teleprinters and punched tape transmission. These systems led to new telegraph codes , starting with the Baudot code . However, telegrams were never able to compete with

11979-485: Was a telegraph code developed for use on the French telegraph using a five-key keyboard ( Baudot , 1874). Teleprinters generated the same code from a full alphanumeric keyboard. A feature of the Baudot code, and subsequent telegraph codes, was that, unlike Morse code, every character has a code of the same length making it more machine friendly. The Baudot code was used on the earliest ticker tape machines ( Calahan , 1867),

12100-465: Was acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets . On March 2, 2022, shortly after its acquisition by Macquarie, the company announced it would begin doing business as "Altafiber". The company's legal name, Cincinnati Bell Inc., was not immediately affected. Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone (SNET) were the only two companies in the old Bell System in which AT&T Corporation only owned minority stakes. Therefore, neither

12221-474: Was appointed Ingénieur-Télégraphiste and charged with establishing a line of stations between Paris and Lille , a distance of 230 kilometres (140 mi). It was used to carry dispatches for the war between France and Austria. In 1794, it brought news of a French capture of Condé-sur-l'Escaut from the Austrians less than an hour after it occurred. A decision to replace the system with an electric telegraph

12342-401: Was coined by the French inventor of the semaphore telegraph , Claude Chappe , who also coined the word semaphore . A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy. The word telegraph alone generally refers to an electrical telegraph . Wireless telegraphy is transmission of messages over radio with telegraphic codes. Contrary to

12463-478: Was considered a Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) for regulatory purposes, restrictions placed on the Baby Bells did not apply to these two companies, and AT&T was not obligated to dispose of their ownership stakes in the companies. AT&T owned 32.6% of Cincinnati Bell until 1984, at which point the shares AT&T owned were placed into a trust and then sold. Cincinnati Bell was, from 2006 to 2022,

12584-414: Was demonstrated on the London and Birmingham Railway in July of the same year. In July 1839, a five-needle, five-wire system was installed to provide signalling over a record distance of 21 km on a section of the Great Western Railway between London Paddington station and West Drayton. However, in trying to get railway companies to take up his telegraph more widely for railway signalling , Cooke

12705-421: Was developed in Britain from the 1840s onward. It was used to manage railway traffic and to prevent accidents as part of the railway signalling system. On 12 June 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone were awarded a patent for an electric telegraph. This was demonstrated between Euston railway station —where Wheatstone was located—and the engine house at Camden Town—where Cooke was stationed, together with Robert Stephenson ,

12826-536: Was founded as the City and Suburban Telegraph Association on July 5, 1873. Founder Charles Kilgour had run the Cincinnati Street Railway with his brother John but became homebound after an accident and began running his business from home via telegraph . The City and Suburban Telegraph Association ran telegraph lines between homes and businesses beginning in 1873, three years before the invention of

12947-658: Was invented by Claude Chappe and operated in France from 1793. The two most extensive systems were Chappe's in France, with branches into neighbouring countries, and the system of Abraham Niclas Edelcrantz in Sweden. During 1790–1795, at the height of the French Revolution , France needed a swift and reliable communication system to thwart the war efforts of its enemies. In 1790, the Chappe brothers set about devising

13068-536: Was invented by US Army surgeon Albert J. Myer in the 1850s who later became the first head of the Signal Corps . Wigwag was used extensively during the American Civil War where it filled a gap left by the electrical telegraph. Although the electrical telegraph had been in use for more than a decade, the network did not yet reach everywhere and portable, ruggedized equipment suitable for military use

13189-782: Was made in 1846, but it took a decade before it was fully taken out of service. The fall of Sevastopol was reported by Chappe telegraph in 1855. The Prussian system was put into effect in the 1830s. However, they were highly dependent on good weather and daylight to work and even then could accommodate only about two words per minute. The last commercial semaphore link ceased operation in Sweden in 1880. As of 1895, France still operated coastal commercial semaphore telegraph stations, for ship-to-shore communication. The early ideas for an electric telegraph included in 1753 using electrostatic deflections of pith balls, proposals for electrochemical bubbles in acid by Campillo in 1804 and von Sömmering in 1809. The first experimental system over

13310-400: Was not immediately available. Permanent or semi-permanent stations were established during the war, some of them towers of enormous height and the system was extensive enough to be described as a communications network. A heliograph is a telegraph that transmits messages by flashing sunlight with a mirror, usually using Morse code. The idea for a telegraph of this type was first proposed as

13431-455: Was preceded by a 50-year history of ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful experiments by inventors to achieve wireless telegraphy by other means. Several wireless electrical signaling schemes based on the (sometimes erroneous) idea that electric currents could be conducted long-range through water, ground, and air were investigated for telegraphy before practical radio systems became available. The original telegraph lines used two wires between

13552-433: Was proposed by Cooke in 1842. Railway signal telegraphy did not change in essence from Cooke's initial concept for more than a century. In this system each line of railway was divided into sections or blocks of varying length. Entry to and exit from the block was to be authorised by electric telegraph and signalled by the line-side semaphore signals, so that only a single train could occupy the rails. In Cooke's original system,

13673-501: Was quickly followed by a different system developed in the United States by Samuel Morse . The electric telegraph was slower to develop in France due to the established optical telegraph system, but an electrical telegraph was put into use with a code compatible with the Chappe optical telegraph. The Morse system was adopted as the international standard in 1865, using a modified Morse code developed in Germany in 1848. The heliograph

13794-549: Was rejected several times in favour of the more familiar, but shorter range, steam-powered pneumatic signalling. Even when his telegraph was taken up, it was considered experimental and the company backed out of a plan to finance extending the telegraph line out to Slough . However, this led to a breakthrough for the electric telegraph, as up to this point the Great Western had insisted on exclusive use and refused Cooke permission to open public telegraph offices. Cooke extended

13915-411: Was renamed Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Company in 1903. From 1930 to 1952, the company converted its exchanges from staffed switchboards to dial service . Seven-digit dialing was introduced in 1962. In 1968, electromechanical switching equipment was replaced by one of the first electronic switching systems . The company formally simplified its name to Cincinnati Bell in 1971. In May 1999,

14036-587: Was responsible for marketing and sales, while AT&T Wireless handled technical operations for the joint venture. Wireless service began by June in Cincinnati and by September in Dayton, eventually covering a 21-county area. When AT&T Wireless was purchased by Cingular, now known as AT&T Mobility , control of its 20% stake also passed to Cingular. On February 17, 2006, Cincinnati Bell took full control of CBW by purchasing Cingular's stake for $ 83 million. As

14157-485: Was sold at Best Buy , Circuit City (until 2009), Office Depot , and participating Kroger locations. It offered HSPA+ service in most of Hamilton County, Ohio , and parts of surrounding counties; EDGE service in Dayton and Oxford ; and GSM service elsewhere. The local coverage area extended north to Celina and Urbana , east to Hillsboro , south to Corinth and Warsaw , and west to Batesville . Cincinnati Bell's prepaid mobile phone products were sold under

14278-496: Was still 42.7 percent. During World War I , Britain's telegraph communications were almost completely uninterrupted while it was able to quickly cut Germany's cables worldwide. In 1843, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain invented a device that could be considered the first facsimile machine . He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires. Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain's design and demonstrated

14399-404: Was still used, although it was accepted that poor weather ruled it out on many days of the year. France had an extensive optical telegraph system dating from Napoleonic times and was even slower to take up electrical systems. Eventually, electrostatic telegraphs were abandoned in favour of electromagnetic systems. An early experimental system ( Schilling , 1832) led to a proposal to establish

14520-617: Was the Chappe telegraph , an optical telegraph invented by Claude Chappe in the late 18th century. The system was used extensively in France, and European nations occupied by France, during the Napoleonic era . The electric telegraph started to replace the optical telegraph in the mid-19th century. It was first taken up in Britain in the form of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph , initially used mostly as an aid to railway signalling . This

14641-480: Was used by British military in many colonial wars, including the Anglo-Zulu War (1879). At some point, a morse key was added to the apparatus to give the operator the same degree of control as in the electric telegraph. Another type of heliograph was the heliostat or heliotrope fitted with a Colomb shutter. The heliostat was essentially a surveying instrument with a fixed mirror and so could not transmit

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