All that remains of billions of dollars is a manhole cover
The American Telephone & Telegraph Company was primarily responsible for the creation and maintenance of the United State national telephone network. Working with analogue switches and hard wires they built an operational network with a reliability factor of 99.99%. It could connect phones, almost anywhere in the country with a point-to-point physical connection. It also brought a fierce resistance to technology innovation, and AT&T lobbied aggressively to keep competitors or equipment providers from competing. This left us with expensive, leased rotary phones and expensive long-distance fees. In 1982 an antitrust lawsuit broke the AT&T empire into seven regional companies called the Baby Bells. This divestiture unleashed years of innovation that created all the features we enjoy today.
You can read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Bell_Operating_Company
Here is the exact location:
https://goo.gl/maps/hbRHzbFstZbLEse27
Assignment
Time to get up close and personal with an Extreme Closeup. If you are thinking this is the MACRO challenge, it is NOT. I suppose macro could technically fit within the challenge, but if you go to the dictionary, you'll find a closeup is 1. a photograph, movie, or video taken at close range and showing the subject on a large scale. "a closeup of her face" or 2. an intimate and detailed description or study. "the book's closeup account of the violence" (taken from Oxford Languages because ya know, they nailed that for us.) We do like putting our own spin on things, though, so simply put, move in and fill your frame with your subject. The idea is to get right into a subject (because this is EXTREME closeup), and have that subject fill the entire frame. You can zoom in with any lens you have, and your feet also make an excellent zoom feature, just walk close to your subject! This is not a challenge for wide open vistas - compose your shots to show as much detail as possible. What can you tell your viewer by pushing in close? What do you want to bring attention to? Try to find an interesting detail or feature - heck, the most mundane of objects can have something striking if you look closely enough. That's what this challenge is all about - take a moment to look closer and see those details that are often overlooked.
