Telephoneland: Alice in Wonderland ~ 1920 Bell Telephone (Patreon)

more at http://quickfound.net/

Silent overview of AT&T operations in the 1920s.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Telephone_Company

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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 became 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 merged with American Speaking Telephone Company 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 evolved into the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), at times the world's largest telephone company...

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 $2.65 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 into which Bell Telephone would shortly evolve. 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 incorporated in New York State as a separate company named American Telephone and Telegraph Company on March 3, 1885. Starting from New York City, 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 $10 million, forestalling American Bell's further growth. With this assets transfer on December 30, 1899, 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. In 1984, the US Justice Department forced AT&T to divest its local phone companies.

In 1947, there was a large strike across the US against the company's long hours and low pay by its workers.

In 2005, AT&T would later be acquired by one of its former local phone companies SBC Communications which became the New AT&T...