3 March 1885: Happy Birthday, American Telephone & Telegraph

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

In my recurring "00:01" series -- a pursuit to provide a memory
of important things we should not forget in technology -- I give
you todays entry.

One additional note -- I'm so pissed off at the telcos right now, for various reason, I almost used this graphic 
instead of the one that I ended up using for the blog:

 http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/small_att.png

Acually, this one is pretty good, too:

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ed/Newatt.gif


[snip]

American Telephone and Telegraph was incorporated as a company in this day in 1885.

The formation of the Bell Telephone Company superseded an agreement between Alexander Graham Bell and his financiers, 
principal among them Gardiner G. Hubbard and Thomas Sanders. Renamed the National Bell Telephone Company in March 1877, 
it became the American Bell Telephone Company in March 1880. By 1881, it had bought 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 $100,000.

In 1880, the management of American Bell, created what would become AT&T Long Lines. The project was the first of its 
kind to create nationwide long-distance network with a commercially viable cost-structure. This project was formally 
incorporated into a separate company christened American Telephone and Telegraph Company on March 3, 1885. Starting 
from New York the network reached Chicago, Illinois in 1892.

Bell's patent on the telephone expired in 1894, but the company's much larger customer base made its service much more 
valuable than alternatives and substantial growth continued.

[snip]

http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/2006/03/3-march-1885-happy-birthday-american.html

Enjoy.

- ferg

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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