The Bell Telephone Company
History
The Bell Telephone Company was originally formed in 1877, by the father-in-law of Alexander Graham Bell. The main commercial basis for the company was Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent, which conferred an enormous technological advantage to the fledgling company.
Two years after the creation of The Bell Telephone Company, in 1879, a merger was formed with a sister company, the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company. The new business was called the National Bell Telephone Company, and the management was taken over by Theodore Vail.
Further mergers with smaller rivals in 1880 created the American Bell Telephone Company. In this same year American Bell created the company AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph). In 1881 American Bell acquired a controlling interest in Western Electric, the electronics manufacturer that would become synonymous with telephones.
By 1899, American Bell had become so big that they were forced to take action to avoid the state of Massachusetts corporate monopoly laws. This action consisted of transferring the assets of American Bell to the ownership of AT&T, which had been formally incorporated in New York, and thus was not subject to the same monopoly laws. AT&T became the parent company for American Bell, Bell System and Western Electric, and was on the road to being the business behemoth it would later become.
