History of Telephone Service
The history of telephone service began with this famous phrase, Come here Mr. Watson, I want to see you! Once those words were spoken, communication changed forever.
Though the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, it was not until a man by the name of Gardiner Hubbard came along that the history of telephone service really began. Hubbard founded the Bell Telephone Company in 1877 (Alexander opted out of the whole deal believing it to be a waste of time). Even though Hubbard named his company “Bell,” the first shop that he erected was called “The Charles Williams” shop. Soon after this first shop was opened, Hubbard selected Theodore Vail – a railroad tycoon -- to be the company’s general manager.
Of course, other business people wanted a bit of the telephone action, and Bell was sued nearly six hundred times during its former years. What was the outcome of all those law suits? Bell managed to win them all ... and walk away without a scratch. Vail began to understand that he was invincible, which prompted him to set up shop across the United States. Interestingly enough, due to Vail’s eager expansion techniques, Bell began to contrive the concept of long distance service (dubbed “Universal Service”). Though Vail had taken Bell through a line of lawsuit fire, there was one company that would not let the telephone pass by unnoticed.
Teaming up with Thomas Edison, Western Union devised a company called the “American Speaking Telephone Company.” Vail immediately recognized the fact that his patents were being stolen by Edison and Western Union, but Edison made his series of phones just different enough to avoid any sort of legal suit from Vail. After this first disaggreement, Edison managed to create a switch board system that was exclusive to Western Union. From the moment Edison arrived on the telephone scene, the history of telephone service began to change in a number of ways.
Vail and Western Union competed with one another for a number of years until the two phone giants signed an agreement in 1879. What did these two fighting foes agree upon? To put it simply, Vail made Western Union an offer that was too good to pass up. Bell agreed to give 20% of its telephone rentals (phones were rented during that time!) to Western Union in exchange for Union’s patents, claims, networks, and inventory. The catch? Bell agreed that this deal would exist for seventeen years ... which happened to be the exact life of the Bell patents.
As you may imagine, the history of telephone service began to morph as time marched on. Bell found that their patents needed constant updating (there was a lot of competition at the time), but they managed to hang on to their original ideas for the most part. Bell still manages to dominate a lot of their competition – and to think, it all began with a man named Alexander Graham Bell and the company that he walked out on so many years ago.