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Collection

Michigan Bell Telephone Company Photographs, 1949-1983

63 linear feet (in 93 boxes)

Photographs (positive and negative), slides, and transparencies taken by the company's photographers to document company activities, products, services, employees at work and at leisure, company exhibits and commemorations, and the response of the company to natural disasters and civil disturbances.

In 1993, Michigan Bell as a corporate entity was subsumed within the Ameritech Corporation. As a by-product of this reorganization and the downsizing resulting from it, the company agreed to deposit with the Bentley Historical Library its extensive archive of photographic images. Totalling approximately one million images, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company photo archive consists of negatives, copy prints, and color transparencies taken in the period since World War II (the bulk beginning in 1949). The collection does not include photos taken since 1983; interspersed throughout, however, are numerous images from before 1949.

The collection has been maintained in the order received with two principal series: Positives and Negatives.

The content of the photographs in the two series varies considerably. Naturally the collection documents the products of the company (phones and other communication devices) and the services provided (e.g. employees at work or the company reacting to a specific customer need). These photos were taken both to inform the general public as accompaniment to press notices and advertising copy and as a communications vehicle within the company, informing employees through the company news publication, Tielines, of activities going on in other divisions of the company or among the various regional Bell offices.

More importantly perhaps, the collection has value for its documentation of events and activities that are common to all large companies. These include images relating to: 1. The activities of employees within the corporation at their work (office workers, repairmen, operators, various support personnel, managers, etc.); 2. The activities of employees outside their work routine as members of corporate social groups (i.e., the company baseball or ice hockey team), at home engaged in leisure time activities, or involved in company-sponsored charitable or public service functions; and 3. Commemorations of specific milestones or events (company parade floats, area office open houses, corporate displays at public events such as fairs, etc.).

In addition, the collection documents the extraordinary and unforeseen as the phone company reacts to events and emergencies not within its control (floods, tornadoes, fires, the 1967 Detroit riot, strikes, and the like) or as a participant in history-making events (the announcement in Ann Arbor of the success of the Salk polio vaccine or the preparation involved in the 1980 Republican National Convention that convened in Detroit).

Folder

Positive Photographic Prints

Arranged alphabetically by topic, the series Positive Photographic Prints consists of more than 700 folders of positive images: mainly contact prints and transparencies, with occasional slides and copy prints. Each image also includes some brief description and the job number. With the job number, the researcher will be able to locate the negative should a copy be requested. To aid the researcher in finding images on a specific subject, an index to this series has been created and appended to this finding aid. As many of the images are of equipment and product development, the researcher should first consult the folder listing as many of the telephone specific headings have not been indexed. The subject index has been geared to subjects of a more general interest (women in the work place, sports, leisure activities, views of Michigan communities, and so forth). The researcher should also note that the Positives series does not include positive images of all of the negatives taken by Michigan Bell photographers. The prints are, however, a good representation of the kinds of photographs taken. It should also be noted that there are prints in this series for which there are no corresponding negatives in the Negatives series. There are occasional negatives in this series filed here by topic because they did not include a job number and thus could not be filed with the rest of the negatives.

Michigan Bell Telephone Company Photographs, 1949-1983
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