Operations research at Bell Laboratories through the 1970s: Part I

Abstract

Operations research (OR) is the application of quantitative methods to the planning and operation of a large and complex activity. By 1975 the Bell System telephone companies were managing over 115 million telephones, 800 million miles of telephone lines, 750,000 employees, and 167,000 vehicles. Small wonder, then, that this vast telephone system placed ever-increasing reliance on people trained in OR and related disciplines to develop economical and efficient methods of helping to manage and maintain the business. For example, the ubiquitous but modest pay telephone could store only a limited number of coins, so that devising efficient and economical coin collection procedures was essential. How this problem was resolved, with the aid of OR, is part of this account, which does not cover military OR or direct support of other federal government activities.