About Lee Goeller
By Ian Angus, President, Angus TeleManagement
Group
In 1980, I left Bell Canada to become an independent
telecommunications consultant, helping Canadian organizations to
select, acquire and implement new telephone systems. The
newly-competitive Canadian telecom market was then being flooded
with PBXs that had previously been available only south of the
border, systems that my years at Bell had not prepared me for. So I
signed up for a Business Communications Review course called
Understanding Modern PBX Systems, held in New York City.
It was a revelation! I learned more about business phone systems
at that two day seminar than I had learned in my entire career at Bell. I
learned how PBXs worked, why they worked that way, which features
made sense and which didn’t, and much, much more.
But the best thing about the seminar was meeting the teacher,
Lee Goeller. He was a truly remarkable hybrid – a professional
engineer with in-depth technical knowledge about how business phone
systems worked, and a consultant who knew, from extensive
practical experience, exactly how businesses use those systems.
Despite industry hype that continues to this day, most
communications systems are designed by people with very little
understanding of customer needs, which is why those systems so
seldom do what we want them to do, and why most organizations use
only a handful of the hundreds of available features. If our
industry had more Lee Goellers, and fewer people who put form ahead
of substance and sales ahead of service, business customers would
have far fewer complaints. (Also, there would be far less work for
consultants, but that's a small price to pay.)
That seminar marked the beginning of my 25-year friendship with
one of the most interesting and knowledgeable people I have ever
met. I read all his books and attended most of his seminars and talks.
Lee wrote for newsletters we published, spoke at our client
conferences, and led seminars we sponsored. Even when he wasn’t
writing for us, he read our publications and sent detailed letters
telling us when and how we got it wrong. I eventually felt that I
had learned enough to disagree with him sometimes – but his opinions were
always solidly based and effectively argued.
Lee has been called a "curmudgeon," and he has even applied the
label to himself. But the dictionary definition of "curmudgeon"
includes the word "ill-tempered," which simply doesn't apply to
Lee. He is unfailingly good-tempered, has a great sense of humor,
and is always willing to share his vast knowledge of
telecommunications with anyone who asks.
On the other hand, Lee doesn’t suffer fools
gladly, especially when the fools are promoting equipment or systems that don't live up to his high expectations. He has very strong
opinions about how telecom systems should work in order to serve
business customers best – and he has no hesitation about publicly
criticizing companies and systems that miss the mark. If that makes
him a curmudgeon, then I wish our industry had many more
of them! Over the years, Lee's insistence on putting the customers'
interests first has forced many changes in the way business systems
are designed, sold and implemented. Along the way, he educated
thousands of people in telecom technology and management.
It's been an honor to know and work with Lee for
25 years, and I'm very pleased to play a role in making his works
available on the net.
by Jerry Goldstone
Jerry Goldstone founded
Business Communications Review,
one of the U.S. telecommunications industry's leading trade
magazines. In addition, he led the company in developing a
comprehensive program of seminars in networking technologies, as
well as some of the industry's most respected conferences, including
VoiceCon and Next Generation Networks. In 2001, he sold his company
to Key3Media, now MediaLive International, Inc.
Lee Goeller is unique. In all my years as a
telecommunications writer, editor, publisher and speaker, I have
never met anyone else who has his deep understanding of technology
coupled with a common sense approach to the issues facing the
customer of business communications systems. I’m honored to have
played a role in bringing his knowledge and insight to the industry.
I'll always remember the first time I met Lee. As
I related in an introduction to one of his books, I was giving a
seminar in Philadelphia on major developments in the
telecommunications industry and, as luck would have it, he decided
to attend. People who give a lot of talks, as I have, become
accustomed to running into differing views from members of the
audience, and quickly develop a broad tolerance ... and a thick
skin. But nothing in my experience had prepared me for Lee!
I think he must have disagreed with about half the
things I said, and delighted in telling me so in front of the rest
of the audience. The result was that much of the day turned into a
dialog between the two of us. By the time the session was over, I
was exhausted, but I had the strong feeling that Lee had enjoyed
himself immensely, and would have been happy to continue the
discussion long into the evening.
I didn't hear from him again for several months.
Finally, he sent me an article he thought I might be interested in
publishing. I was. And that was the beginning of a long and fruitful
relationship that included many articles, seminars and a book on
PBXs that became a key industry reference for many years.
It was obvious from our first meeting that Lee is
a person with strong views, and the ability and willingness to
express them. But over the years, I have also come to view him as
very special. Special in his single-minded dedication to users of
business communication systems. Special in his curiosity as to why
things work as they do, whether they are individual pieces of
telecom equipment or whole networks. And special in his ability to
write about complex, technical subjects in a way that is
understandable to non-engineers—and to do it with great wit and
style.
Anyone who spends any time on this website, will
come away with a sweeping technical panorama of the competitive
telecommunications era, from step-by-step, Strowger switches to the
Internet. Lee has a certain reverence for the past and the
technologies that built telecommunications into the great industry
it is. But he also recognizes progress when he sees it. What he
often objects to, however, are technological "innovations" that
don’t result in benefits to the customer, such as lower costs,
greater functionality, higher reliability or more services. He has
always believed that progress in telecommunications comes from
building on the past, rather than ripping out the past and hoping
for the best.
Over the past 30 years, countless people in this
industry have benefited from Lee’s wisdom. Through his articles, his
books and his popular seminars, he has made an important
contribution to the understanding of telecommunications products and
networks. I’m delighted that Business Communications Review
could play a role. It’s been a pleasure knowing Lee for all these
years.
By Harry Newton
Lee Goeller was my first
columnist for my first magazine,
Teleconnect.
I knew nothing about telecommunications equipment. He
knew everything. And that was why he made a great columnist. The
fall of 1982 – when we started Teleconnect – was an
exciting, heady time. The telecom industry was finally getting
competitive. People were forming PBX and key system
manufacturing companies. The products they were making were
light years ahead of the stodgy equipment put out by the
telephone company subsidiaries, like Western Electric and
Automatic Electric.
The world needed someone to interpret which
systems were best for which applications
and for which companies. And that person was Lee Goeller. His
scientific background, his raw intelligence
and his rampant cynicism were perfect for the task. To the world
I say, Lee Goeller is my telecom mentor and my inspiration. I
don’t believe the telecom industry would
be as advanced as it is today without Lee.
I’m glad Ian Angus of Angus Telemanagement
has put this site up. Lee is a good
writer. You’ll enjoy
his material.
By the way, this is a photo of me. If you’re
interested in what I’m doing, please visit
www.HarryNewton.com
Lee Goeller wrote this biographical sketch of
himself for Image vs Reality, a short-run book he
self-published in 1992.
Lee Goeller grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of
Virginia where he learned at an early age he did not want to be a
farmer. The vagueness of other possibilities was soon clarified when
his draft physical for World War II showed that it was he who was
nearsighted and not the rest of the world that was out of focus.
Unable to participate in the dismemberment of the Third Reich, he
did the next best thing: he became a radio announcer (1943). Having
a verbal delivery foreshadowing that of Ross Perot, he was quickly
diverted into the writing of radio commercials.
Although he was initially little better at writing
than reading, the constant effort required to grind out hucksterisms
for other announcers proved to be excellent training for the future.
However, he discovered the technical side of radio and ultimately
became a jack of all trades, running the transmitter, writing
commercials and reading them between phonograph records.
An argument with his boss's wife cured his
nearsightedness to the satisfaction of the draft board, and he spent
a year in the Air Farce (1949). After basic training, he was offered
a job in Washington where his responsibilities would have included
the provision of after-hours entertainment for officers. Preferring
to work in electronics, he turned down this golden opportunity and
became a bomb control system repairman stationed in the western
desert.
Upon observing that the only people who got ahead in
either the civilian or military service had college degrees,
something alien to the practice in radio, newspaper work or other
fields he had previously encountered, he went to the University of
Virginia upon return to civilian life. By using his skills as a
radio copy writer, he wrote readable lab reports, term papers, and
other assignments at lightning speed, obtaining an undergraduate and
Masters degree in Electrical Engineering in minimum time (1954).
In an effort to remedy the shortage of engineers
widely touted in the press in the mid-1950s, he spent the next 12
years at Bell Labs trying, with some 200 others as confused as he,
to build a stored program controlled electronic telephone switch. In
spite of the company training program which not only contained a
wealth of irrelevancies and misinformation, but also prevented
independent study that might have been useful, and management whose
goals were perhaps less clearly defined than they might have been,
No. 1 ESS (now called 1ESS) lumbered into being. To the surprise of
all, Goeller's work produced five patents, an excess of honor
usually reserved for those pre-destined for promotion. During this
time, Lee also wrote a chapter on telephone switching for a
hand-book published by McGraw Hill, again usurping the prerogatives
of the anointed.
After leaving Bell Labs, Lee tried unsuccessfully to
obtain a Ph.D. at Rutgers. A year later, although a drop-out, his
handbook chapter recommended him to RCA where he worked for a time
on military telephone switches. Then came his big break. RCA formed
a modern telecommunications management group and offered him an
opportunity to join it. He accepted and enjoyed some 5 years as a
representative of a gigantic customer for telephone services. As a
customer, he discovered a great deal about telecommunications that
Bell Labs had neglected to mention, and again used his copy writing
skills to create proposals, requests for proposals, analyses, and
other documents which forced him to think through many aspects of
business communication to their more or less logical conclusions.
Offered the opportunity to go into private
consulting (1974), Lee put his Bell Labs and RCA skills to good use,
packaged in the faithful format developed in his days of writing
radio copy. He also began doing seminars and writing articles for
Business Communications Review, and wrote a book on telephone
switching which, if he had had it 20 years before, would have
shortened the development of 1ESS by 10 years. He continued his
consulting practice, seminars and writing, using his BCR Manual of
PBXs as a tool to influence the telephone industry to consider the
customer in the design and construction of PBXs, telephone sets,
etc.
Some of the points Lee has emphasized over the years
are as follows:
-
It is better to be 4-wire than digital, but if you
are digital, you will be 4-wire.
-
All Digitals are Not Created Equal.
-
The acquiring of a PBX is like dating; managing a
PBX after you have acquired it is like marriage.
-
After-sale support is more important than an
infinite features list.
-
You can't provide business telephone service with
residential telephone instruments, no matter how many features a PBX
has.
-
If you have to train the station user, your PBX is
designed WRONG.
-
When all long distance carriers claim to save you
20%, at least one of them has to be lying.
-
Call detail recording will not reduce costs if
nobody reads the reports.
-
Cutting toll costs without specifying grade of
service is fraud.
-
There is no such thing as a 9600 baud modem.
-
It is possible that the customer knows what he or
she wants.
The meaning of these esoteric points can be found in
Lee's technical writings.
Lee Goeller is now
semi-retired in Haddonfield, NJ.
3,336,442:
TRUNK SWITCHING CIRCUITRY
Russell C. Casterline, Lincroft, and Leopold F.
Goeller, Jr., Hazlet, NJ, and John M. Nervik, Bethesda, Md.,
assignors to Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated, New York,
N.Y., a corporation of New York
Filed June 9, 1964. Ser. No. 373,696. 33 Claims.
(Cl. 179—18)
ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE: An electronic
telephone system is disclosed employing a program controlled data
processor for controlling and supervising the establishment,
maintenance and release of call connections from telephone stations
through line and trunk link networks and trunk circuits. Scanner and
pulse distributor facilities are activated by the data processor to
control the selective connection of digit transmitters, receivers
and test equipment to an input termination of a trunk circuit in the
link network. The facilities also operate the trunk circuit to
establish electrical networks including a direct current network
from the input termination of the trunk circuit to an interoffice
trunk.
3,431,368:
EQUIPMENT FOR TESTING SHOWERING RESISTANCE ON COMMUNICATION LINES
Leopold F. Goeller, Jr., Hazlet, N.J. and John M.
Nervik, Bethesda, Md., assignors to Bell Telephone Laboratories,
Incorporated, New York, N.Y., a corporation of New York
Filed July 15, 1965, Ser. No. 472,233
U.S. Cl. 179—175.2 13 Claims
Int. Cl. 1104m 3/22
ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE: A program
controlled telephone system is disclosed with switching equipment
which provides for the automatic testing of a telephone line
immediately alter a showering condition thereon initiates a call.
The equipment includes ferrod and relay circuitry for performing
tests under control of a central processor to distinguish between a
low line current produced by a showering line resistance and a
higher line current produced by a valid call on the line.
3.378,643:
IMMEDIATE RINGING EQUIPMENT FOR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Leopold F. Goeller, Jr., Holmdel Township.
Monmouth County, N.J., assignor to Bell Telephone Laboratories,
Incorporated, New York, N.Y., a corporation of New York
Filed Dec. 10, 1964. Ser. No. 417,444
14 Claims. (Cl. 179—18)
ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE: A program
controlled telephone system is disclosed having switching equipment
which provides immediate ringing power to each called telephone at
the instant that call connections are established to the called
line. The equipment includes a distribution circuit which
successively connects ringing power from a generator individually to
each of a plurality of ringing control circuits so that continually
at least one such control circuit has ringing power available for
immediate connection to a called phone. Data processor facilities
determine the control circuit presently having available ringing
power and control its connection through the network to the called
telephone.
3,378,650:
COMMUNICATION SYSTEM SIGNALING AND TESTING EQUIPMENT
Leopold F. Goeller, Jr., Holmdel Township,
Monmouth County, N.J., assignor to Bell Telephone Laboratories,
Incorporated, New York, N.Y., a corporation of New York
Filed Oct. 15, 1964, Ser. No. 403,989
26 Claims. (Cl. 179—175.2)
ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE: A program
controlled telephone system is disclosed having equipment which
provides for the testing of a called telephone line for excessive
leakage and foreign potential prior to the ringing of the called
phone. The equipment also includes magnetic latching relays for
establishing the test configurations and ferrods for sensing the
results of the tests as well as the supply of ringing to the called
phone and the tripping of that ringing.
3,441,678:
CONFERENCE CIRCUIT WITH SELECTIVE CALL SPLITTING
Albert H. Budlong, Lincroft, Edward T. D.
Calhoun, Long Branch. and Leopold F. Goeller, Jr., Holmdel Township,
Monmouth County, N.J., assignors to Bell Telephone Laboratories,
Incorporated, New York, N.Y., a corporation of New York
Filed Sept. 3, 1965, Ser. No. 484,888
Int. Cl. 1104in 3/56
U.S. Cl. 179—18 16 Claims
ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE: A conference
circuit, for use in a telephone switching system, comprising a
plurality of identical conferee circuits is disclosed. The input
terminals of each of the conferee circuits may be connected to any
subscriber line or any trunk, by means of the switching system
network. The output terminals of each of the circuits are connected
to a transformer-amplifier arrangement for coupling the circuits
together and each circuit comprises relays which are controlled by
the telephone switching system in response to codes dialed by a
controlling one of the conferees. Selective operation of the relays
of a circuit causes a conferee which is connected to the input
terminals thereof to be either connected to or isolated from the
conference coupling arrangement.
3,912,867:
FOUR-WIRE CONFERENCE CIRCUIT
[75] Inventor: Leopold Frederick Goeller, Jr.,
Haddonfield, NJ.
[73] Assignee: RCA Corporation, New York, NY
Oct. 14, 1975
ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE:
A four-wire conference circuit for providing signal transmission
between one pair of receive conductors associated with a four-wire
circuit and two other pairs of transmit conductors associated with
two other four-wire circuits. The conference arrangement utilizes
hybrid circuits interconnected such that the receive pair of any
given one of several four-wire circuits may transfer signals to the
transmit pairs of more than one additional four-wire circuit without
injecting these signals into its own transmit pair of conductors.
This conference capability can be made part of the four-wire trunk
circuits by slight modification to the equipment which is normally
part of these circuits. |
