AT&T – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

An archive of documents from the early days of Bell Telephone Company – including correspondence by Gardiner G. Hubbard, Alexander Graham Bell’s father-in-law – sold for $10,157 at an October 2012 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In 2013, Nancy and I took a cruise from New York City to Montreal. On Sept. 23, we had the great pleasure of touring the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. We were struck by its unusual design, which is based on the tetrahedron form used in his many flight experiments with kites. There were also numerous original artifacts, photographs and exhibits of his groundbreaking scientific accomplishments.

Bell (1847-1922) was awarded patent #174465 just four days after his 29th birthday for the first practical telephone – “the most valuable single patent ever issued” in any country. Our guide informed us that Bell would not allow a telephone in his study or laboratory since he considered it a distraction to his reading and experiments. I was aware that both his mother and wife were deaf and this had a profound effect on his passion for working on sound, speech and hearing. What surprised me was the breadth of his scientific achievements. He was awarded 18 patents and collaborated on another 12 in medicine, aeronautics, genetics, electricity, sound and marine engineering.

Another surprise was that his wife Mabel was the daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, founder and first president of the National Geographic Society (founded in 1888) and also the first president of Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T). Although AGB (he got a middle name only after constantly nagging his father) was not a founder of National Geographic, he was its second president, following his father-in-law. This was organizational incest on a scale that rivaled the British monarchy.

But the result was an organization that has given several generations a certain sense of where we are and where we want to go. Commanders-in-chief, explorers, schoolchildren and even daydreamers have put their full trust in the splendid maps of the National Geographic Society and their brilliant cartographers. The elegant and clearly legible typefaces for place names, one source of the map’s mystique, were designed by the magazine’s staff in the 1930s.

It was founded in Washington, D.C., at the Cosmos Club, another venerable organization founded in 1878 and boasting of membership by three presidents, two vice presidents, 12 Supreme Court justices, and 36 Nobel and 61 Pulitzer Prize winners (they don’t bother with ordinary U.S. senators).

During World War II, National Geographic maps were at the epicenter of the action, thanks in part to a U.S. president who was deeply interested in geography. The society had furnished Franklin D. Roosevelt with a cabinet that was mounted on the wall behind the desk in his private White House study. Maps of continents and oceans could be pulled down by the president like window shades; they were in constant use throughout the war.

In the early winter of 1942, President Roosevelt urged the American people to have a world map available for his next fireside chat, scheduled for the evening of Feb. 23. FDR told his aides, “I’m going to speak about strange places that many have never heard of – places that are now the battleground for civilization. … I want to explain to the people something about geography – what our problem is and what the overall strategy of the war has to be. I want to tell it to them in simple terms of ABC so that they will understand what is going on and how each battle fits into the picture. … If they understand the problem and what we are driving at, I am sure that they can take any kind of news on the chin.”

There was an unprecedented run on maps and atlases. The audience, more than 80 percent of the country’s adult population, was the largest for any geography lesson in history.

The National Geographic Society went on, expanding the scope of its focus – with maps for the amazing Mount Everest to outer space and the ocean floor. As the Society’s former chief cartographer put it: “I like to think that National Geographic maps are the crown jewels of the mapping world.”

He was right, until Google maps created a new technology in need of its own headware.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

5-brown-back-bears-signature-of-new-york-financier-j-pierpont-morgan-a — An 1882 $5 Brown Back, National Bank of Commerce in New York note, bearing the signature of J.P. Morgan as vice president (lower right), went to auction in September 2007.

By Jim O’Neal

John Pierpont “J.P.” Morgan may have been the preeminent U.S. banker in the last half of the 19th century. He was born in 1837, avoided serving in the Civil War by paying a substitute the traditional $300 to take his place, and started his banking career … first in London with his father and then in New York City. In addition to becoming a famous financier, he accumulated a world-class art and precious gem collection.

It is his role in helping finance the development of the United States that provides the most interest. In fact, throughout the entire span of his lengthy financial career, there was a chronic lack of capital in the United States to fund economic development. This was primarily due to the lack of a strong national bank or a system to monitor monetary policy and ensure adequate liquidity … without triggering runaway inflation.

This situation was exacerbated by a series of “financial panics” that seemed to occur with regularity every 15 to 20 years due to myriad factors (e.g. bank failures, speculative bubbles, asset-liability mismatches, over-leverage, economic recessions, depressions, etc.). The United States had several in the 19th and 20th centuries and we almost collapsed the entire financial system in 2007-08 after the bursting of the housing bubble and too much bank leverage using exotic products. Central bankers around the world are still struggling with economic development while sovereign governments abdicate their fiscal responsibility.

During Morgan’s career, there was also the issue associated with European investors being skittish about investments in America that were hard to monitor from 3,000 miles away. This was especially true for railroads that were enormously capital intensive. This void created a perfect role for Morgan in New York and his father in London. They could match up sound investments in the United States with eager foreign investors by taking “moral responsibility” (their term) for overseeing their clients’ investment through their bank.

If a railroad went bankrupt, J.P. would personally step in and take charge by managing the bankruptcy, replacing top management, restructuring the financing, installing a new board (often including himself) and staying until the company’s health was restored. This reorganization of railroads came to be called “Morganization.”

Once the essential railroad structure of America had been knitted together into a sound economic and geographic sector, he then turned his talent to industrial organizations. He put together the first billion-dollar corporation by combining several small steel companies with Carnegie Steel and creating U.S. Steel. Next was Edison Electric and Thomson-Houston to form General Electric, one of the original 12 Dow Jones companies.

He and his partners put together International Harvester, financed AT&T, bailed out the U.S. Treasury when they were about to run out of gold during the 1893 Panic, and almost single-handily stopped the Panic of 1907. In this case, he was a national hero, but within a short period many Americans were horrified that one private citizen had so much power. This led to a national monetary commission and eventually the Federal Reserve System of today.

When J.P. Morgan died in 1913 and billionaire John D. Rockefeller read in The New York Times that his estate was only worth $80 million, Rockefeller reportedly shook his head and said, “And to think, he wasn’t even a rich man!”

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Tag: AT&T

Bell’s Influence on National Geographic Society Often Overlooked

J.P. Morgan was Crucial to the Financial Development of the United States