12 Friendly People and 1 Old Grump

That was the sign at the time as you drove into the Town of New England ND. I never met the grump, but I had a lot of fun driving 100 MPH down arrow straight perfectly maintained gravel roads. Where are you going to get that.

Anyway, it was a long way to go to get my first lesson in emergency generator reliability.

It was a simple sign on the wall of an AT&T outpost: “Our customers expect uninterrupted service”. Anyone who knew the old AT&T people would say that they had religion, and felt that society was depending on them.

We had contracts to improve the generator fuel systems at a network of AT&T facilities throughout the upper Midwest. These towers were radar repeater stations located in a grid about every 50 miles so that they could maintain line of sight over the earths curvature. They were built to support the cold war missile systems, since dismantled.

Inside was some basic monitoring gear, so that they could see remotely what was going on in these unmanned stations. It as probably a precursor to the internet of things devices that Gen App is all about.

About 1000 miles south we recently upgraded a generator fuel system at another AT&T facility. It was one of their iconic downtown stone clad buildings, but crammed full of gear. They said that 80% of internet traffic in the southern US goes through that building. But people always say things like that, so who knows.

From Cold War Missiles to Dense Internet Traffic, those are some examples of the critical applications that are Gen App heritage.