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Bell Telephone Company

American corporation

Quick Summary

The Bell Telephone Company, later known as American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), was an American corporation that revolutionized telecommunications. Founded in 1877, it commercialized the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell, a scientist and teacher of the deaf. Bell's invention, patented in 1876, allowed for the transmission of the human voice over wires.

The Bell System encompassed AT&T, its manufacturer Western Electric Company, and research facility Bell Laboratories. This integrated structure controlled the vast majority of telephone services in the United States for decades. The Bell System was dismantled in 1983 when its operating companies were divested by court order.12

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