Bell Telephone Company

A Bell System logo (called the Blue Bell) used from 1889 to 1900. The Bell Telephone Company and its successors created the Bell System and drove its expansion.

The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company. The Bell Telephone Company was started on the basis of holding "potentially valuable patents", principally Bell's master telephone patent #174465.

The two companies merged on February 17, 1879, to form two new entities, the National Bell Telephone Company of Boston, and the International Bell Telephone Company, soon-after established by Hubbard and which was headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Theodore Vail then took over its operations at that point, becoming a central figure in its rapid growth and commercial success.

The National Bell Telephone Company subsequently merged with others on March 20, 1880, to form the American Bell Telephone Company, also of Boston, Massachusetts.

Upon its inception, the Bell Telephone Company was organized with Hubbard as "trustee", although he was additionally its de facto president, since he also controlled his daughter's shares by power of attorney, and with Thomas Sanders, its principal financial backer, as treasurer. The American Bell Telephone Company would later evolve into the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), at times the world's largest telephone company.

Predecessor to the Bell Company

The Bell Patent Association (a name later assigned by historians), was technically not a corporate entity but a trusteeship and a partnership, and was first established verbally in 1874 to be the holders of the patents produced by Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson.

Approximate one-third interests were at first held by Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a lawyer and Bell's future father-in-law; Thomas Sanders, the well-to-do leather merchant father of one of Bell's deaf students (and who was the very first to enter into an agreement with Bell); and finally by Alexander Graham Bell himself. Hubbard would subsequently register some of his shares with two other family members. An approximate 10% interest of the patent association was later assigned by its principals to Bell's technical assistant Thomas Watson, in lieu of salary and for his earlier financial support to Bell while they worked together creating their first functional telephones.

The verbal Patent Association agreement was first formalized in a memorandum of agreement on February 27, 1875. The Patent Association's assets would later became the foundational assets of the Bell Telephone Company.

Earliest division of Bell Company shares

Gardiner Hubbard, first president and a trustee of the Bell Telephone Company, and father-in-law of Alexander Graham Bell

At the time of the organization of the Bell Telephone Company (also known as the Bell Company) as a joint stock company in 1877 by Hubbard, who became its trustee and de facto president, 5,000 shares in total were issued to:

• Gardiner Greene Hubbard (trustee and president): 1,397 shares, along with
  • Gertrude McC. Hubbard, (likely Gertrude Mercer McCurdy Hubbard, wife of Gardiner Hubbard): 100 shares
  • Charles Eustis Hubbard (the nephew of Gardiner Hubbard): 10 shares
• Alexander Graham Bell (inventor and formally the company's 'Chief Electrician'): 1,497 shares
• Thomas Sanders (financier and treasurer): 1,497 shares
• Thomas Watson (head of operations): 499 shares

Two days after the company's formation, on July 11, 1877, Bell married Hubbard's daughter Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, and made a wedding gift of 1,487 shares of his allotment to his new wife, keeping only 10 shares for himself. Bell and his wife left not long after for a tour of Europe that lasted over a year, during which time Mabel left her shares with her father under a power of attorney.

Alexander Graham Bell's ten shares of Bell Telephone Company stock were later converted into a single share of the American Bell Telephone Company, and still later into two shares of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. AT&T President Frederick Fish would subsequently return Bell's single American Bell Telephone Company share to him as a memento after it had been converted and canceled.

Early promotional success

The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876, brought Bell international attention.

Alexander Graham Bell's fiancée Mabel Hubbard was the indirect source of the Bell Telephone Company's early commercial success after his creation of the telephone. The U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 brought Bell's newly invented telephone international attention. Exhibition judges Emperor Dom Pedro II of the Empire of Brazil and the eminent British physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) recommended his device to the Committee of Electrical Awards, which voted Bell the Gold Medal for Electrical Equipment, helping to propel him to international fame. Bell also won a second Gold Medal for his additional display at the exposition, Visible Speech —developed earlier by his equally famous father Alexander Melville Bell.

Pivotally, late in the evening moments after the main group of tired judges and newspaper reporters had quickly looked over and derided Bell's telephone display, Emperor Dom Pedro, who was straggling, entered the fair's Education Building where Bell's two displays were located. As the main group started moving on to the next exhibit to be reviewed, Dom Pedro came upon the displays and called out to Bell in his booming voice: "What are you doing here?" The emperor had previously met Bell in Boston much earlier while visiting schools for the deaf in the United States.

Startled by the emperor's enthusiastic response to Bell's telephone demonstration—during which the emperor exclaimed "My God! It talks!", the crowd of judges and press members became energized and vied to take turns communicating with Bell over his invention.

Ironically, Bell, who was then a full-time teacher, hadn't even planned on exhibiting at the fair due to his heavy teaching schedule and preparation for his student's examinations. He went to Philadelphia only at the stern insistence of Mabel Hubbard, his then-fiancée and future wife and who was an expert multilingual lip reader, deaf since age five.

Mabel had understood Bell's reluctance to go to the exhibition and display his works, so she secretly bought his train ticket to Philadelphia, packed his bag, and then took the unknowing Bell to Boston's train station, where she told her shocked fiancé that he was going on a trip. When Bell started arguing, Mabel turned her sight away from him and became literally deaf to his protests.

Worldwide expansion

Main article: International Bell Telephone Company

In 1879 Gardiner Hubbard founded the International Bell Telephone Company in order to promote sales of its telephone equipment throughout Europe. During his tour of the continent the Belgian government offered him the greatest financial incentives to establish his European subsidiary's headquarters in their country.

The International Bell Telephone Company (IBTC) shortly evolved into a holding company for its various telephone service and production divisions, with its major manufacturing arm being the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company (BTMC), which was founded in Antwerp, Belgium, on 26 April 1882. BTMC was created as a joint venture by the International Bell Telephone Company of New York and the Western Electric Company of Chicago, Illinois. BTMC then established la Compagnie Belge du Téléphone Bell (Bell Telephone Company of Belgium) in the same year as its Belgian operating subsidiary for telephone service, one of several companies that provided such service in the country, the others having evolved principally from telegraph carriers.

BTMC eventually came under complete ownership by Western Electric, and also established multiple other divisions as national companies across Continental Europe and Russia. Western Electric was itself later majority owned by the American Bell Telephone Company, returning indirect control of BTMC back to the Bell organization.

Divestiture of most international divisions

At the very close of 1899, the American Bell Telephone Company was acquired, for business purposes, by its own subsidiary, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), which then became the head of the monolithic and monopolistic Bell System.

Significant criticism of AT&T (a monopoly) had emerged in the United States that domestic telephone system rates were higher than they needed to be, and that AT&T was using those revenues to subsidize its European operations. Due to that reason and others, and also due to the U.S. Government's regulatory intervention, AT&T president Walter Gifford divested almost all of its international interests in 1925, with the exceptions of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada (now called Bell Canada), and Northern Electric (now called Nortel).

In 1925 the European division and its subsidiaries were sold to the International Telephone & Telegraph Company (IT&T, unaffiliated with AT&T) of Cuba, at the start of that company's meteoric rise in the international telecommunications industry.

Acquisition by AT&T

Main articles: American Telephone & Telegraph and Bell System

Alexander Graham Bell ceremonially inaugurating the first New York to Chicago telephone line in 1892

By 1881 American Bell had acquired a controlling interest in the Western Electric Company from Western Union. Only three years earlier, Western Union had turned down Gardiner Hubbard's offer to sell it all rights to the telephone for US$100,000 (approximately $2.38 million in current dollars). In only a few years Western Union's president would acknowledge that it was a serious business error, one that nearly led to his company later almost being swallowed up by the newly emerging telecommunications giant that Bell Telephone would shortly evolve into. Western Union was saved from demise only by the U.S. Government's anti-monopoly interventions.

A year earlier in 1880 the management of American Bell had created what would become AT&T Long Lines. The project was the first of its kind to create a nationwide long-distance network with a commercially viable cost-structure. The project was formally incorporated in New York State as a separate company named American Telephone and Telegraph Company on March 3, 1885. Starting from New York, its long-distance telephone network reached Chicago, Illinois, in 1892, with its multitudes of local exchanges continuing to stretch further and further yearly, eventually creating a continent-wide telephone system.

On December 30, 1899, the assets of American Bell were transferred into its subsidiary American Telephone and Telegraph Company (formerly AT&T Long Lines); this was because Massachusetts corporate laws were very restrictive, and limited capitalization to ten million dollars, forestalling American Bell's further growth. With this assets transfer on the second to last day of the 19th Century, AT&T became the parent of both American Bell and the Bell System.

John Elbridge Hudson joined Bell Telephone as counsel in 1880 and served as president from 1889 to 1900. AT&T would later be acquired by SBC Communications which became the New AT&T.

Memorial to Bell's invention

Main article: Bell Telephone Memorial

In 1906 the citizens of the City of Brantford, Ontario, Canada and its surrounding area formed the Bell Memorial Association to commemorate the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in July 1874 at his parent's home, Melville House, near Brantford. Walter Allward's design was the unanimous chose from among 10 submitted models, winning the competition. The memorial was originally to be completed by 1912 but Allward did not finish it until five years later. The Governor General of Canada, Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, ceremoniously unveiled the memorial on 24 October 1917.

Allward designed the monument to symbolize the telephone's ability to overcome distances. A series of steps lead to the main section where the allegorical figures of Inspiration appears over a reclining male figure representing Man, the inventor, and also pointing to the floating figures of Knowledge, Joy, and Sorrow, positioned at the other end of the tableau. At each end of the memorial there are two female figures mounted on granite pedestals representing Humanity, one sending and the other receiving a message.

The Bell Telephone Memorial's grandeur has been described as the finest example of Allward's early work, propelling the sculptor to fame. The memorial itself has been used as a central fixture for many civic events and remains an important part of Brantford's history, helping the city of Brantford style itself as 'The Telephone City'.

The Bell Telephone Memorial, commemorating the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. The monument, paid by public subscription and sculpted by W.S. Allward, was dedicated by the Governor General of Canada, Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire with Dr. Bell in The Telephone City's Alexander Graham Bell Gardens in 1917.

See also

• American Telephone & Telegraph
• Bell, Alexander Graham
• Bell Telephone Company of Canada, founded in 1880 after its predecessor was sold by Graham Bell's father, Alexander Melville Bell, to The National Bell Telephone Company
• Bell, Mabel Hubbard, wife of Alexander Graham Bell.
• Bell System, a name and trademark formerly used by AT&T.
• Bell Telephone Memorial, a large monument by Walter Allard dedicated to the invention of the telephone
• Hubbard, Gardiner Greene
• International Bell Telephone Company, the Bell Telephone Company's European division
• Regional Bell Operating Companies, which were divested from the Bell System in 1984
• Telephone Cases, the numerous court cases contesting the validity of the Bell patents
• Watson, Thomas Augustus, Bell's assistant
• Western Electric, co-founded by Bell's early rival Elisha Gray, acquired by the Bell Company's rival Western Union, and finally acquired by the Bell Telephone Company, it became the Bell Company's key manufacturing arm, enabling its rapid expansion across the continent.

References

Footnotes

Citations

Bibliography

• Brooks, John. Telephone: The First Hundred Years, Harper & Row, 1976, ISBN 060105402, ISBN 978-0-06-010540-2.
• Bruce, Robert V. Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8014-9691-8.
• Pizer, Russell A. The Tangled Web of Patent #174465, AuthorHouse, 2009, ISBN 1-4389-8402-2, ISBN 978-1-4389-8402-5.

Further reading

• Tossiello, Rosario. "The Birth and Early Years Of The Bell Telephone System, 1876–1880" (dissertation), Boston University, 1971.
• Larned, Larry. Birth of The Blue Bell Telephone Signs: The History of the Blue Bell Telephone Sign as implemented by New England Telephone and Telegraph, BellTelephoneSigns.com website, February 26, 2007. Retrieved January 12, 2010.
• Wu, Tim, The Master Switch : The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-26993-5