AT&T Archives: Newfoundland Long Lines, a WWII film made by the U.S. Army and AT&T, from 1943

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This film, made jointly by AT&T Long Lines and the U.S. Army in 1943, documents the improvement to local telephone systems on the island of Newfoundland in order to support war efforts and bases there.

Newfoundland has always been critical to the development of global communications. The first transatlantic telegraph cable made landfall in that region as early as 1860, and it was where Marconi sent and received his first transatlantic signal.

Because of the region's proximity to both Europe and America, it was deemed a critical area to place new army bases leading up to and during WWII. It was important to have a stable transatlantic communications base on Newfoundland in a pre-satellite, pre-undersea telephone cable era.

So the Americans built military bases on Newfoundland, starting in 1941. And very quickly it became apparent that the existing telephone system on the island was not up to the army and navy's needs, they would have to supplement the communications infrastructure. The U.S. Army alone spent 3.5 million rewiring the island (there was help from Bell Canada), and this film documents some of the building process. By 1943, there were more than 20,000 new telephone poles and 527 new miles of cable spanning the island.

These speedy efforts employed 300 Bell System employees and 700 Newfoundland natives. There were seven manned and 57 unmanned repeater stations along the route.

After the war, the bases weren't quite as necessary. By 1949, all of the repeater stations had closed or were updated with modern automated technologies. That same year, Newfoundland joined Canada. Over the next few decades, the bases closed one by one, until the final base was the naval base at Argentia, which was decommissioned in 1994.

Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

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