In the 1920s Western Electric put out this fascinating “material series” of advertisements to narrate the material (and men) that went into the Bell telephone. The campaign appeared in a whole host of magazine and periodicals, from mainstream fare like Life, Forbes, and Time to popular technical publications like Scientific American and The Technology Review. Fashioned as a means to attract the public (and potential employees) to the impressive reach of its engineering and extraction, the vignettes and research produced for the campaign would go on to feature in some of the company’s more extensive publications and industrial films at the close of the decade.
Here’s a sample:
