Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
ITT Corporation, , former American telecommunications company that grew into a successful conglomerate corporation before its breakup in 1995.
ITT was founded in 1920 by Sosthenes Behn and his brother Hernand Behn as a holding company for their Caribbean-based telephone and telegraph companies; it received its name in imitation of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). Throughout the 1920s ITT expanded into the still-undeveloped European telephone market, obtaining the concession for telephone service in Spain in 1924. In 1925 the company purchased AT&Tâs large foreign manufacturing subsidiary, International Western Electric, and renamed it ITT Standard Electric Corporation; this move made ITT a major telecommunications manufacturer in 11 countries.
Sosthenes Behn was succeeded by Harold Sydney Geneen, who ran the company from 1959 to 1978. Under Geneen, ITT became an aggressive conglomerate and underwent a second period of rapid expansion, acquiring 275 other companies and increasing its annual sales nearly 20-fold. Among its purchases were the Sheraton Corporation, one of the largest American hotel chains, in 1968, and one of the nationâs leading insurance firms, the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, in 1970.
