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aMos e. Joel, Jr.
1918–2008
elected in 1981
“For inventions and contributions to switching system developments for the
nationwide public telecommunications network.”
BY W. O. FLECKENSTEIN
sUBMiTTed By THe Nae HoMe secreTary
aMOS E. JOEL, JR., a world authority in the field of
switching, died october 25, 2008. He was 90 years old. amos
was born in Philadelphia on March 12, 1918. He was fascinated
with electronics in his childhood and graduated from deWitt
clinton High school in the Bronx. He earned his bachelor’s
(1940) and master’s (1942) degrees in electrical engineering
from the Massachusetts institute of Technology (MiT). after
graduation he was hired by Bell laboratories, where he worked
for 43 years. during World War ii, he designed circuits for
general-purpose digital computers and was instrumental in
the development of coding and decoding machines for military
and diplomatic uses.
amos Joel was totally engaged in switching technology
for his entire adult life. in his career at Bell laboratories he
was involved in many projects, was a prolific inventor, wrote
a great deal about switching technology, and participated in
many education and training programs. one could make a very
long list of his contributions. for this tribute i have decided to
focus on three contributions that i believe are major:
first, the automatic Message accounting (aMa) system,
which was a necessary ingredient in the move from operator-
handled toll calls to direct distance dialing (ddd) by the
customer.
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Second, the system design of the first Electronic Switching
system (ess).
Third, the design of the Traffic Service Position System
(TSPS) to provide much more efficiency for operator handling
of special calls.
Automatic Message Accounting
The evolution of the telecommunications network in the
United states is a rich technical story. it has been a continuous
process from the very beginning. one of the biggest steps in
that evolution was the move from operator handling of toll
calls to direct distance dialing by the customer. The planning
for that move, carried out by Bell laboratories, was one of
the finest pieces of systems engineering I have ever seen.
The main ingredients of the plan were as follows: a standard
10-digit numbering plan for North america that gave a unique
destination code for every telephone line on the network, a
network hierarchy and routing plan so the common control
switching systems of that time could route calls through the
network efficiently, and an automatic system for billing the
customer.
The billing system involved a system in the local central
office to record the details of all long-distance calls for that
office. The storage medium at the time was embossed paper
tape. The tapes were shipped to a central aMa center, where
the call records were automatically assembled and calculations
were made for billing the customer. i was a relatively new
employee at Bell labs when this work was done and was not
directly aware of individual contributions. However, i have
been told that amos Joel was a major contributor to the design
of the aMa system.
Electronic Switching
With the invention of the transistor in 1948 and the rapid
advances in semiconductor electronics, it quickly became
clear that the speed of these technologies would be a major
advantage in common control switching systems. at that time
amos worked in a small systems engineering group and did
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the first system design of a local electronic switching system. In
1976, I nominated A. E. Joel, R. W. Ketchledge, and W. Keister
for the ieee Bell Medal, which they won—Joel for the early
system design, Ketchledge for the hardware implementation,
and Keister for stored program control.
Traffic Service Position System
even though customer dialing of long-distance calls reduced
substantially the need for operators in the Bell system, many
operators were still needed to handle special types of calls,
such as collect calls, person-to-person calls, and charge-to-
third-number calls. amos Joel was a major contributor in the
development of the Traffic Service Position System, which
was a console for the operator with as much automation as
possible to provide as much efficiency as possible in handling
these special calls.
in the 1970s when i was made vice president of switching
systems in Bell labs, one of the major goals that i set for my
organization was to reduce the operator force in the Bell
system by 50 percent. The TsPs system was one of the major
tools that allowed us to meet that goal.
The three major contributions discussed above and a
myriad of other contributions mark the stellar technical career
of amos Joel. in 1981 he received the franklin institute’s stuart
Ballentine Medal and was elected a member of the National
Academy of Engineering. He received the Kyoto Prize in
advanced Technology in 1989.
He is survived by his daughters, stephanie Joel of New
york city and andrea Joel of Burbank, california. His wife,
rhoda fenton, died in 2000, and his son, Jeffrey, died in 2003.
Additional contributions from Andrea and Stephanie Joel:
“Yes, my career has been one-of-a-kind, and interaction
with many friends at Bell laboratories, in the Bell system, and
from around the world, who made it possible.”—amos e. Joel,
Jr., april 18, 1983 (upon his retirement)
from a very young age, we knew that we had an
extraordinary father.
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For “Show & Tell” in grade school, we brought a copy of
our father’s patent for the “Automatic Message Accounting
System, “ which, at the time, as profiled on the front page of
the “Business Section” of The New York Times, was the largest
patent granted by the United States Patent Office (USPO). So
we knew that our father was some sort of a creative/scientific
genius—if not a bona fide, local celebrity.
However, in our home, he was a dad who worked hard, had
a fabulous and mischievous sense of humor, loved italian food
and chocolate, was fascinated by trains—especially the gg1,
and appreciated all kinds of music, which he played nightly
on his yamaha or Hammond organ. family time was spent
mostly at dinners, holidays, and summer family vacations,
many of which took place on cape cod. although his work
was very intense, he was always a very gentle, quiet man with
a twinkle in his eye. His great joy was in making us laugh.
His love of inventing and patents became stuff of legends
in our house. We always loved to hear the story of how he met
our mother on a blind date. He invited her up to his room at
MiT to see his patents—which, in fact, he really did! although
Mom thought he was crazy, they were married for a fantastic
58 years!
Dad’s “love affair” with inventing did come at an early age.
at 14 he developed a personal telephone system for himself
and his friends. To us these were his “juvenile delinquency
years,” whereby he connected all of his friends on West 86th
street in New york city, using phone lines in abandoned
apartments that were vacated because of the depression.
We were always amused at this story and how a telephone
repairman discovered the rigging and threatened to send him
to “juvey hall” if he didn’t disconnect it pronto. How easily his
brilliance could have been channeled for “evil” rather than for
the greater good of humanity!
NoTe: This system was the forerunner of his future “Joel
all-relay dial system,” which was the basis of his graduation
thesis from MiT.
Throughout his formative years, dad’s fascination with
inventing and technology grew increasingly stronger.
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aMos e. Joel, Jr.
There was no question that he wanted to work for only one
company—Bell Telephone laboratories (Bell labs), the
scientific/research/development arm of AT&T. Although that
almost didn’t happen, Bell labs hired him in 1941, after he
graduated from MiT.
When the United states entered World War ii, Bell labs
was instrumental in the development of electronics and
communications technologies. our father’s contributions to
these efforts were immeasurable. He was part of the team that
developed and created designs for early digital computers
and cryptanalysis machines, code named “Project X.” British
computer pioneer alan Turing used some of dad’s ideas in the
development of the “Colossus” machine, which helped crack
the German “Enigma” code.
dad’s group also designed a scrambler code named
“Sigsaly.” This allowed for private encrypted communication
between Winston churchill and franklin d. roosevelt. for
this extraordinary accomplishment, along with his colleagues,
dad’s name appears on the wall of Buckinghamshire, the
wartime code-breaking center at the Bletchley Park Museum.
dad was always proud of his wartime achievements and the
impact that they had on the outcome of the war. fast forward
to 1994. His daughter, andrea, already an emmy award–
winning set decorator for cBs, was able to put the art director
of the television miniseries, “World War II: When Lions
roared,” in touch with dad. cBs needed help in re-creating
the room from which churchill conversed with fdr—a room,
of course, with which dad was very familiar—and had actual
pictures of the room that he could now share.
it was interesting attending the theater with dad in 1987
to see “Breaking the Code,” a play about Alan Turing and the
breaking of the “Enigma” code. It was the first time we met
any of dad’s colleagues who worked with him during the
war. Clearly, the audience was filled with as many wartime
“celebrities” as there were on stage!
in 1946, after World War ii, Bell labs realized the importance
for engineers to learn about electronic switching. dad was
instrumental in providing an electronic switching curriculum
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to the newly formed “school,” which enabled him to go from
one facility to another to train Bell’s engineering staff. so
Dad became a “traveling professor,” a responsibility that he
embraced until he retired in 1983.
our brother Jeffrey, who was a mathematician, had a greater
understanding regarding what our father did for a living, but
nowhere was his celebrity more apparent than during the 1964
World’s fair. dad was instrumental in the development of the
AT&T Pavilion, which at the time was showcasing the “Picture
Phone.” although our father would have been content to wait
in a lengthy line for all of us to view the exhibit, on which he
had labored day and night, our mother soon showed him the
error of his thinking.
Throughout the development of this pavilion, family dinners
were constantly interrupted by calls from robert Moses,
requiring dad to drop what he was doing and travel to the
site in flushing Meadows, Queens. from Mom’s perspective,
at the very least, we should be given preferential treatment
rather than wait in line. sheepishly, dad went to the head of
the line and spoke with the manager, gaining our immediate
entrance. We were treated to a private tour of the exhibit with
dad’s running commentary. Within no time he had amassed
a large audience, which crowded around him to hear what he
had to say.
over the years dad received many awards and
acknowledgments for his significant contributions:
1976: He was awarded ieee’s alexander graham Bell
Award. He accepted this award with William Keister and Ray
Ketchledge, “for conception and development of Electronic
switching systems and their effective introduction into a
nation-wide telephone system.”
1981: He was awarded the franklin institute’s stuart
Ballantine Medal for “his achievement in bringing into being
the electronic switching system (ess) and for his contributions
towards the many functions it makes possible for modern
telecommunications.”
1987: He was instrumental in the development of the
ieee (institute for electrical and electronics engineers)
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aMos e. Joel, Jr.
communications society, which honored him in 1987 as
the “Father of the ISS International Switching Conference.”
From that time on, he was known to his colleagues as “Mr.
switching.”
NoTe: The forerunner of the ieee was the aiee (american
institute of electrical engineers). encouraged by Bell labs, dad
helped promote the need for and oversaw the development of
a “Switching Committee.” This committee eventually became
the international switching symposia (iss).
1989: He was awarded the Kyoto Prize in “recognition of
eminent achievements in the field of telecommunications.”
1992: He was awarded ieee’s highest honor, its Medal
of Honor. This marked the first time that our entire family
attended an awards ceremony—including his father. How
proud was he!
1993: He was honored by the United states with the
National Medal of Technology for “his vision, inventiveness
and perseverance in introducing technological advances in
telecommunications, particularly switching, that have had
a major impact on the evolution of the telecommunications
industry in the U.s. and worldwide.”
2008: Perhaps the most treasured recognition was bestowed
upon him within his last year. at the age of 90 he was inducted
into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for “his U.S. Patent
#3,663,762 on the Mobile Communication System.” “This
basic patent on cellular switching pioneered the most rapidly
growing segment of the telecommunications industry. His
invention allows for the convenient use of cell phones.” His
patent also became a focal point in a lawsuit between AT&T
and Motorola as to which company was entitled to bragging
rights to the development of the cell phone. Because of dad’s
initial patent, awarded in 1972, that right was granted to
AT&T.
in 2008 we (andrea and stephanie) were able to bring dad
to akron, ohio, to accept this honor in person, accompanied by
dad’s godson, david Quinto. This memorable trip was made
all the more remarkable by david’s story that dad had related
to david’s father, dad’s oldest and dearest friend. in 1972, Bell
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labs was apparently quite shortsighted on the marketability
of dad’s invention. Bell labs viewed it as important, but a
patent of little or no consequence—seeing an application for
maybe about 100,000 users worldwide—slightly less than the
4.6 billion current users worldwide!
on regarding this invention of cell phone technology, dad
was most gratified that his invention enabled 9-11 victims to
speak with their loved ones until they ultimately perished.
Ironically, Dad did not have a “modern cell phone” for his own
personal use. although he kept up with and was continually
fascinated by the current design/technological trends, he was
content to carry his original cell phone prototype, which was
something analogous to a brick. He kept the phone in his car
so that he could order pizza on the way home from the office.
Before he passed away in 2008, and in conjunction with
his induction into the National inventors Hall of fame, a
front-page article ran in The Newark Star Ledger about his
achievements. dad always loved kids and for many years
served as a judge for the New Jersey science fair competition.
He also used to go to schools and discuss technology with kids
in the local grade schools, but after the article appeared, dad
actually achieved “rock star” status.
Having heard about the article on our father, and being
offered the opportunity to be addressed by anyone of
importance, local campers resoundingly wanted to meet the
inventor of the cell phone. With eager anticipation, they waited
for his arrival, and as he was walking down the hallway to the
classroom, the whispers grew louder as they announced that
he had arrived.
2009: His final recognition, to date, was awarded to him
posthumously. He was given the Marconi society’s lifetime
achievement award.
dad was passionate about documenting and sharing his
love of and the importance of electronic switching from which
other engineers could learn. He published numerous articles
on the subject, and in conjunction with the 100th anniversary
of the invention of the telephone, AT&T commissioned a series
of books on the history of Bell labs. dad edited the volume on
switching.
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other publications of note are:
Electronic Switching: Central Office Systems of the World
(ieee Press, 1976)
Electronic Switching: Digital Central Office Systems of the
World (ieee Press, 1982)
100 Years of Telephone Switching (1878–1978): Part 1:
Manual and Electromechanical Switching (elsevier, 1982);
Part 2: Electronics, Computers and Telephone Switching
(elsevier, 1990) (Both edited with robert J. chapuis)
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: The
Early Years, 1878–1925 (Bell labs, 1982)
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System:
Switching Technology, 1925–1975 (Bell labs, 1982)
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ieee Press, 1993)
“He was the ultimate Switchman,
living to four-score and ten.
His patents all were legendary;
He improved the lives of men.”
—Stephanie Joel (October 24, 2008)
