Admittedly, our expectations were low

In America in the 1970s, we really didn't ask for much. And if The Bell System is willing to spend $400 million on a "Super Switcher" that could handle HALF A MILLION CALLS PER HOUR, well, we were just thankful to have that.

If you don't know what "The Bell System" was, that was the phone company. As in THE phone company - we only had one. I'm pretty sure it's called Bell because Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but it would also make sense to call it that because phones used to have literal bells inside them, so I've never been sure about that. Ultimately controlling all the phones was deemed to be a bad thing, and The Bell System was broken up into a bunch of companies that got rich then got poor, then got bought by Yahoo and then all came back together and we call that AT&T - or something.

But back in the 1970s, we really didn't ask much of a telecommunications services provider. 5G data? GPS? Wifi connectivity? Lol - nah, just let me call my grandma from the kitchen instead of the living room, and a 25-foot cord would be a great bonus!

So $400 million (roughly $8.4 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2026 dollars) to be able to handle 500,000 voice calls per hour. The data consumed by 500,000 voice calls is roughly .026 seconds of a TikTok video. But it would save billions of dollars, because it cost like $6 to call your grandma two states away and talk for 20 minutes.

We also walked on the moon in the 1970s. Haven't quite been able to repeat that (yet!), but back home, we had pretty low expectations.

Credit: A Word From Our Sponsor
Original Video: 45 Minutes of 1970s Commercials