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The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983.
The breakup of the Bell System resulted in the creation of seven independent companies that were formed from the original twenty-two AT&T-controlled members of the System. On January 1, 1984, these companies were NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, Southwestern Bell Corporation, BellSouth, and US West.
Bell System, a former American telephone system, governed by American Telephone & Telegraph Company (now AT&T Corporation; q.v.) and including Western Electric Company (q.v.), the system’s manufacturer; Bell Laboratories (q.v.), the research and development facility; and other departments and 22.
The nation-wide Bell System network, which was described as the largest computer in the world, was the result of teamwork by people at AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Western Electric, and the local Bell Telephone companies.
In 1947, the Bell System honored the 100th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell's birth with a long (for a Bell System film) biopic. The half-hour film starred Raymond Edward Johnson as Bell and Mason Adams as Thomas A. Watson.
The Bell System (AT&T and the various other companies it owned) had become the dominant phone service provider in the United States long before the 1920s; in fact, it had a monopoly on phone service even then.
The Bell Telephone Company was the initial corporate entity from which the Bell System originated to build a continental conglomerate and monopoly in telecommunication services in the United States and Canada.
