AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY, THE. The first telephone company was formed in 1876 when the inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, assigned to the Bell Patent Association his first two telephone patents. On July 9, 1877, this first association was succeeded by the Bell Tele phone Company, first as a trusteeship and later as an incorpora tion. This company in turn was succeeded, in 1879, by the Na tional Bell Telephone Company, which represented the Bell inter ests until the American Bell Telephone Company was organized on March 20, 188o, and that in turn became the parent Bell com pany until Dec. 1, 1899, when the directors voted to transfer all the assets of the company, both in stock and in property, to the already existing American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
After this transfer, accomplished by an exchange of stock, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company became the central or parent company of the Bell system, which now furnishes tele phone service in every State in the United States of America. This company owns about nine-tenths of the voting stock of the regional operating .companies, called the Associated telephone companies, owns and operates directly long-distance lines inter connecting these regional companies and maintains a central or ganization which, together with the Bell Telephone Laboratories, provides scientific research and development, technical knowledge and standardization of methods in all departments of work. In addition to the Bell Telephone Laboratories, the American Tele phone and Telegraph Company controls through stock ownership the Western Electric Company which furnishes economical tele phone equipment of the latest and most improved design and manufacture. This corporate structure is peculiarly adapted to meeting the needs of the telephone business.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company's charter, granted in 1885, stated that the purpose of the company was to build and operate telephone lines for long-distance communication connecting the regional operating companies, including `the con structing, buying, maintaining and operating of lines of electrical communication within the State of New York, and from points within the State of New York to points anywhere in the United States, in Canada and Mexico, and by cable and other appropriate means anywhere through the rest of the world." The outstanding stock of the American Telephone and Tele graph Company was in Dec. $1,866,227,500, par value. It was owned by 675,027 stockholders, of whom not one owned as much as 1 % of the stock. The average holding was 28 shares. The total of all Bell system stocks was $2,097,107,843, par value, owned by about 745,000 stockholders. The total assets of the Bell system amounted to of which $4,248,186,253 rep resented telephone plant.
The Associated Bell companies on September 3o, 1935 owned and operated 13,674,00o telephones in the United States. There were, in addition, 3,453,00o telephones, owned by nearly 6, 700 independent telephone companies to which the Bell system gave telephone connection over its lines under contract. This made a total of more than 17,127,0oo telephones served by the Bell sys tem. This service was rendered over a network of more than 87,000,00o m. of wire, of which 80,425,00o m. were Bell owned. During the year 1934 the Bell system made a daily average of 58, 790,00o telephone connections throughout the United States network.
In the Bell system (including the Western Electric Company and Bell Telephone Laboratories) there are more than 270,000 employees, with a monthly payroll of over $36,000,000.
By the steady improvement of telephone service the Bell system is increasing the range and improving the efficiency of American business and social life, while the extension of the service by trans-oceanic telephony, which began with the opening of tele phone service between New York and London on Jan. 7, 1927, has made possible the connection of the American telephone system with the systems of a large part of the rest of the world. By 1935 only three countries in the world with more than 1 oo,000 telephones each—Russia, China, and New Zealand—could not be reached by telephone from the United States, and ninety-three per cent. of the world's telephones could be reached by any Bell System telephone. (W. S. G.)