Ross Wehner: Telecom Industry's History Evident In Man-Hole Covers
Denver's manhole covers get no respect.
The discs, like iron waffles smushed into the street, are spat upon, smeared with street muck and - worst of all - completely ignored.
But downtown Denver's thousand-odd manhole covers - and, more specifically, the few hundred laid by telecommunications companies - are like rare dinosaur bones.
Taken together, they tell the story of a relentless stream of acquisitions, mergers and bankruptcies in America's communications industry that began not long after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.
Colorado, in particular, was one of the world's centers of the telecom industry in the 1990s until the merger mania and bust of the past five years.
The number of Colorado telecommunications workers fell from 46,862 in 2001 to 32,529 in 2004, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Manhole covers are about history," said Denver telecommunications historian Herbert Hackenburg, 70. "The manhole covers are hard to erase. They represent companies that died a long, long time ago - or were the foundation for new companies."
Deep within the basement of the Qwest building at 17th and Arapahoe streets, Hackenburg runs the United States' largest independent telecommunications archives.
He sits atop a collection of 8,000 glass insulators, Western U.S. phone directories dating to 1879, a huge collection of antique phones. Also in the collection are two of Denver's oddest manhole covers - both of which bear the name of The Colorado Telephone Co. and are cast iron, weighing 300 pounds apiece.
The earliest one, from the 1880s, is square.
"You know why manhole covers are now round?" asked Hackenburg. "So they can't be dropped into the hole and kill somebody."
...
Historic walking tours of manhole covers are offered in New York. Cities from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Fort Worth, Texas, have hired artists to design their next generation of manhole covers. One artist in New London, Conn., decorates manhole covers with iridescent colored sand, while a photographic exhibit in Hamburg, Germany, displays varied cover designs from around the world.
The discs, like iron waffles smushed into the street, are spat upon, smeared with street muck and - worst of all - completely ignored.
But downtown Denver's thousand-odd manhole covers - and, more specifically, the few hundred laid by telecommunications companies - are like rare dinosaur bones.
Taken together, they tell the story of a relentless stream of acquisitions, mergers and bankruptcies in America's communications industry that began not long after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.
Colorado, in particular, was one of the world's centers of the telecom industry in the 1990s until the merger mania and bust of the past five years.
The number of Colorado telecommunications workers fell from 46,862 in 2001 to 32,529 in 2004, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Manhole covers are about history," said Denver telecommunications historian Herbert Hackenburg, 70. "The manhole covers are hard to erase. They represent companies that died a long, long time ago - or were the foundation for new companies."
Deep within the basement of the Qwest building at 17th and Arapahoe streets, Hackenburg runs the United States' largest independent telecommunications archives.
He sits atop a collection of 8,000 glass insulators, Western U.S. phone directories dating to 1879, a huge collection of antique phones. Also in the collection are two of Denver's oddest manhole covers - both of which bear the name of The Colorado Telephone Co. and are cast iron, weighing 300 pounds apiece.
The earliest one, from the 1880s, is square.
"You know why manhole covers are now round?" asked Hackenburg. "So they can't be dropped into the hole and kill somebody."
...
Historic walking tours of manhole covers are offered in New York. Cities from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Fort Worth, Texas, have hired artists to design their next generation of manhole covers. One artist in New London, Conn., decorates manhole covers with iridescent colored sand, while a photographic exhibit in Hamburg, Germany, displays varied cover designs from around the world.