More than 200,000 Bell System employees own AT&T stock purchased under payroll sayings plans. Many of these, together with other employees, are now buying shares under the current payroll sayings plan. Such widespread ownership by investors helps make possible the good telephone service you get today. Ideals and aims The management of the Bell System recognizes its responsibility to treat fairly _telephone users_, _employees_ and _share owners_. It believes that the interests of these three great groups of people are linked closely together. Management’s aim and responsibility is to see that telephone users get the most and best possible service. The cost of service must be as low as may be consistent with good wages and working conditions for employees and with a reasonable return for share owners on their investment in the business. The Bell System believes that the _most and best possible service_ means telephone service for the nation that, so far as possible, is free from imperfections, errors or delays—service that enables anyone, anywhere, to pick up a telephone and talk to anyone else, clearly, quickly, at reasonable cost. [Illustration: _Coaxial cable can simultaneously transmit hundreds of telephone conversations and several TV programs._] Research Improves Telephone Service Telephone research began in 1876 in the Boston attic where Alexander Graham Bell carried on his first successful experiments on the “electric speaking telephone.” From Bell’s modest beginning has evolved the Bell Telephone Laboratories of today, where over 9,000 scientists, engineers, technicians and auxiliary personnel constantly seek ways to improve telephone service, widen its usefulness, and keep its cost low. Some members of the Laboratories are engaged in _basic research_. They explore the physical sciences—physics, mathematics, chemistry—seeking basic knowledge that may contribute to better communications. _Fundamental development_ is the second step in the chain leading toward manufacture and use. In the third step, groups engaged in _systems engineering_ plan how the new knowledge and discoveries of research can be used to create new facilities for telephone service, improve service, or reduce costs. Final step is the specific _development_ and _design_ of new systems or products. This involves the construction of laboratory models, trial models, service tests, and preparations for mass production. This description is, of course, a highly simplified account of the work of the Laboratories. The broad functions of research and development constantly merge. At all times there must be close co-operation among various groups in the Laboratories, between the Laboratories and the telephone companies, where models are tried out, and between the Laboratories and Western Electric, where products are manufactured.