A mere 25 years ago American Telephone and Telegraph, a.k.a. Ma Bell, broke up. An excerpt from John Steele Gordon’s American Heritage article:
American Telephone and Telegraph had its origins in Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone, for which he received a patent in 1876. The telephone had a great practical advantage over the telegraph, which had been in operation since the 1840s. The latter required skilled operators at both ends of the line, while anyone could work a phone. Within a few years the Bell Company had 150,000 subscribers and the business was growing exponentially. Bell licensed local telephone exchanges to use its technology (charging $20 a year per installed phone) and later began taking an ownership interest in these locals.
As the telephone rapidly became a business necessity, the demand to be able to call long distance to other cities grew. (It took far longer to become a common household amenity; it would be 1946 before half the households in America had a phone.) AT&T connected New York and Boston in 1884 and reached Chicago by 1892. It would reach San Francisco by 1915, by which time most parts of the country were linked by phone.
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