[My father worked for AT&T system from before WWII until he retired in 1972, at the age of 57. This included 15 years on overseas jobs with Western Electric. It would be a shame to lose any of these historical documents. My first job, while still in High School, was as a long distance operator. Sally] Are AT&T archives on the line? SBC merger leaves future of telecom pioneer's vast collection hanging Sunday, February 13, 2005 By KEVIN COUGHLIN Star-Ledger Staff More than jobs may be at stake when the SBC Communications broom sweeps through the halls at AT&T. AT&T has long touted its archives in Warren as the nation's largest and oldest repository of corporate materials, which tell the story of modern communications. This unassuming warehouse is a geek's treasure trove, with holdings ranging from Alexander Graham Bell's 1876 patent for the telephone to hair-thin strands of fiber-optic cable. What happens after SBC's $16 billion planned takeover of Bedminster-based AT&T could be a different story. SBC officials say it is too early to speculate about the fate of the archives, but some technology mavens worry the history of telecom could land on the curb. "They'll drag in the Dumpster," says A. Michael Noll, a communications professor at the University of Southern California and former scientist with AT&T's Bell Labs in Murray Hill. "One thing we know about mergers -- the survivor has to destroy the DNA of the victim. They have to destroy that identity. You can't have people thinking they're still part of AT&T. They're part of SBC." SBC says it expects to slash 13,000 jobs and other "redundant" operations in creating the country's biggest telephone company. "I'm very concerned what will happen to those archives," says Louis Galambos, who teaches business history at Johns Hopkins University and used the archives for scholarly research in the 1980s. SBC spokesman Walter Sharp says it is too early to say what will become of the archives -- though he noted SBC has preserved collections from prior takeovers. But with AT&T staff cuts already crimping scholars' access to the company's gems, some historians see SBC -- a former part of the Bell network -- as a potential savior. "SBC has demonstrated a commitment to the history of telecommunications," says Sheldon Hochheiser, AT&T's historian until a downsizing last year. While AT&T won't discuss archive staffing, company spokesman Andy Backover says AT&T still views its collection as an asset, for itself and the industry. Michael Riordan, whose book "Crystal Fire" traced the transistor's invention at Bell Labs, calls the AT&T archives priceless because they document the birth of technologies "that defined what it is to be modern." These include miniature electronics and microwave relays, solar cells and satellite communications -- ironically, creations that would overwhelm Ma Bell by spawning today's cheap digital communications. With more than 700,000 artifacts, the archive would span more than eight and a half miles if everything were stretched end-to-end. "AT&T would be a crown jewel in our collection," says Bill Caughlin, SBC's corporate archivist. "SBC is the logical custodian. We share the same history, basically." SBC houses materials from Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis and Ameritech in a 10,000-square-foot San Antonio facility modeled after the National Archives. The oldest items date to 1878. Another SBC pickup, SNET, gave its historical material to the University of Connecticut. Caughlin toured the AT&T archives in 2000. He says he has room for AT&T documents -- but he isn't sure if big artifacts such as radar antenna would stay in New Jersey. AT&T's keepsakes from Bell Labs include vintage phones, 1890s brochures for long-distance service ("500 miles and back in five minutes") and some nifty notebooks. "Value gain 100, Power gain 40," reads a 1947 entry from Walter Brattain, who later shared a Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor. A hoarier tome documents the first phone conversation: "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Lucent Technologies, which was spun off from AT&T, now owns Bell Labs, but retains access to the AT&T archives. A Lucent spokesman says he can't predict how the SBC deal might change that. Galambos says history sometimes is a casualty of mergers. He still laments pharmaceutical archives lost after Merck acquired Sharp & Dohme -- a half-century ago. A Merck spokesman said the company retained some of the archive materials, but couldn't offer specifics. Noll says he expects AT&T will go the way of Pacific Bell, a household name for generations on the West Coast. He says Pacific Bell's identity has been replaced by SBC's -- right down to the name on the San Francisco Giants' ballpark. Most corporate archives have survived the bean-counters so far, says Leslie Simon of the National Archives and the Society of American Archivists. IBM shut its archives in lean times, then reopened them. Archives can help the bottom line in subtle ways: Cigna's archives helped that insurer plot its business strategy in the former Soviet Union, says Simon. Archives can help defend lawsuits and boost brands, too. When New York's Museum of Modern Art tapped the collection for an exhibit on AT&T's role in making movies talk, it told the world: "Here is a company that does all kinds of interesting things to improve your life that you don't even think about," Hochheiser says. Among those rooting for SBC is the Smithsonian Institution's Bernard Finn, who says AT&T cutbacks have "virtually shut down" the archives. Finn says the Smithsonian would be interested in absorbing the vast collection -- but it might have trouble fitting it all. Taking control of archives isn't for the faint-hearted. It took Delaware's Hagley Museum & Library five years to catalog much smaller holdings from MCI, according to the museum staff. Exxon Mobil is paying the University of Texas $300,000 to house 17 tractor-trailer loads of material, including early gas pumps, kerosene lanterns and letters from John D. Rockefeller. The school will bear future costs. "When you take on somebody's archive, it's a permanent thing, not an ephemeral thing," says Don Carleton, director of the university's Center for American History in Austin. "There has to be interest and commitment on the part of the institution to maintain it over the long haul." Some companies clean their attics to forget their pasts, no matter how fabled. Western Union, once synonymous with telegrams, delivered its archives to the Smithsonian in the 1970s to shed its "old- timey" image, Finn says. Western Union later asked to borrow back its artifacts -- to remind customers of its "firm roots." "As we know," Finn says, "this didn't save the company." Kevin Coughlin covers technology. He can be reached at kcoughlin@starledger.com or (973) 392-1763.