RARE \"AT&T\" H.D. Romnes Hand Signed TLS Dated 1966 For Sale

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RARE \"AT&T\" H.D. Romnes Hand Signed TLS Dated 1966:
$139.99

Up for sale RARE! "AT&T" H.D. Romnes Hand Signed TLS Dated 1966. 

of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, died yesterday at Sarasota

Memorial Hospital. He was 66 years old. Mr. Romnes leaves his wife, the former

Aimee Champion; a daughter, Mrs. Albert Olenzak; two brothers, a sister and

three grandsons. Haakon Ingolf Romnes, who rarely used anything but the

initials for his given names, spent 44 years with the telephone company. His

career covered every area of telecommunications, from research and development,

where he held several patents, to the leadership of the nationwide Bell System.

Mr. Romnes's interest in electrical engineering began at the University of

Wisconsin, although he had considered concentrating on economics. His decision

led to a job in the summer of 1927 before his senior year with the Wisconsin

Telephone Company, where he was a phone Installer and worked with a

construction crew. With his newly earned diploma, he joined the Bell Telephone

Laboratories—then on West Street in lower Manhattan—as a circuit designer. In

the next seven years he was awarded six patents and, despite the Depression,

kept his job because of his ingenuity. When he joined the parent A.T.&T.

company's engineering department in 1935, he found his interest in economics

useful in working out the practical application of laboratory ideas. In 1950 he

was sent back to the Middle West as chief engineer of Illinois Bell Telephone

Company in Chicago. But a year later New York reclaimed him as operations

director for A.T.&T.'s Long Lines department. In 1953 he was made chief engineer,

and in 1955, vice president for operations and engineering. These were the

years when direct dialing became widespread and many telephone operators were

forced out of work. Mr. Romnes saw that the company had a problem—the loss of a

personal touch with the customers. It was his concern with the human side of

the huge corporation that made him favorite among his fellow employes. As

president of Western Electric, the manufacturing subsidiary, from 1959 through

1963, he introduced significant changes. On the technical side, he strengthened

links with Bell Telephone Laboratories at the factory level for smoother and

more efficient incorporation of new developments. Administratively, he

decentralized the management to improve coordination with the regional

companies it served. And in human relations, he made Western Electric one of

the first eight major defense contractors to pledge equal employment

opportunity for blacks on July 12, 1961, at the White House. On Jan. 1, 1964,

he became vice chairman of A. T. & T., and president a year later. In 1967

he was made chairman and chief executive officer. From 1970 until his

retirement on April 1, 1972—mandatory following his 65th birthday—he was both

president and chairman. Company employes commenting at the time agreed that Mr.

Romnes was the best chairman they had ever had. Among his favorite themes were

the ideas that even sudden change can be rationally managed; that taking time

to know the other person better and to listen to him tends to diminish

differences; that institutions have no rights except through performance; that

longterm consequences are more important than quick results; and that even in a

complex society, one man can make a difference. He was philosophical about

government regulation, observing: “If we in business can say of the bureaucrat

that ‘he never met a payroll’, it can also be said with equal justice that ‘we

never carried a precinct.’ We have a lot to learn from each other.” Mr. Romnes

was a director a favorite among his fellow emSteel, Cities Service,

ColgatePalmolive and other companies. His civic activities included the

presidency of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and directorships of the

Council for Financial Aid to Education, Planned ParenthoodWorld Population and

a governorship of the Business Committee for the Arts. He held many honorary

degrees and had been scheduled to receive next year's John Fritz Medal for

scientific or industrial achievement awarded by the engineering community. 

RARE "AT&T" H.D. Romnes Signed TLS Dated 1966

$139.99

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