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Building the Bell System
If someone was making a list of the most important American companies today, it’s unlikely AT&T would be anywhere near the top. It’s large, but not notably so: it came in 32nd in the 2024 Fortune 500 ranking, just above Comcast and below Verizon. Its offerings are not unique: it’s just one of many companies providing phone, internet, and other communication services. By market cap, AT&T is less than 10% of the value of Amazon, and around 4% of the value of Apple.
AT&T researchers worked out how to turn de Forest’s audion (originally used purely for radio wave detection) into an electronic amplifier in 1913, and in 1914 used it to build the first transcontinental telephone line, connecting New York and San Francisco. The most devastating of its opponents proved to be MCI, a company that aimed to offer its own microwave-based long-distance phone services, and needed to connect to AT&T’s network in order to do so. The Justice Department case wound through the courts for several years, and in 1982 AT&T lost and was forced to divest its 22 companies providing local telephone service.
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