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Article: AT&T
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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AT&T
AT&T
(American Telephone and Telegraph) is virtually synonymous with the telephone. It existed as a government-regulated monopoly until its court-ordered breakup in 1984. In return for its monopoly status, the company provided universal phone service at a reasonable cost. For most of the twentieth century, AT&T (or "Ma Bell") was the largest company in the world, with more than 1 million employees and $155 billion in assets. In the early 1980s, the dawn of the Information Age, political maneuvers and competition for control of the long-distance market combined to break up the Bell System.
After inventing the phone in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell founded Bell Company a ...