Today’s post was written by David Langbart, archivist in Research Services at the National Archives at College Park, MD.
In late 1948, the Women’s Club of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, decided to devote one of its programs to developments in the field of communications over the previous half-century. To secure information to facilitate that discussion, on October 19, Lucille Robb wrote to the Department of State’s Office of Transport and Communications asking for information on the subject. That inquiry did not elicit the usual perfunctory response enclosing a copy of a prepared statement, Congressional testimony, or a press release. Instead, about a month-and-a-half later, Robb received a 7-plus page specially-prepared overview that explained the value of telecommunications to the modern (1948) world and provided a short history of international telecommunications, a description of how telecommunications was organized in the United States, and a peak at future possibilities, some of which has since come true.
The author of this enlightening letter was Hazel O. Briggs, a relatively new employee in the Telecommunications Division, one of the components of the Office of Transport and Communications. After graduating from the University of Washington in 1937, a few years of work in private industry, and service as a clerical worker in the Army and Navy during World War II, she joined the Department of State as a stenographer in late 1945 and became an administrative assistant in 1948. Briggs was promoted to a position as a foreign affairs officer in 1950 and in 1954 she became a Foreign Service Officer and eventually served as a consular officer in Toronto, Aruba, and Reykjavik.
Source: Lucille G. Robb (Mrs. R.R. Robb) to the Department of State, October 19, 1948; Francis Colt de Wolf, Chief, Communications Division to Mrs. R.R. Robb, December 3, 1948, file 800.74/10-1948, 1945-49 Central Decimal File (NAID 302021), RG 59: General Records of the Department of State.
Wow! That reply was amazing.