Word: bells
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Bell was quick to realize that the whole world would some day talk with his invention. (He hoped that the entire nation would one day sing The Star-Spangled Banner in unison over the telephone.) But he left the commercial development of his gadget to a group of friends and associates, retired to his laboratory to improve his magic box, continued his work for the deaf...
Repeatedly Bell was called out of retreat to testify in more than 600 patent lawsuits before his patents expired in 1893-94. Western Union, which had a monopoly on telegraphic communications, at first turned down an offer to buy Bell's patents. When Bell's invention began to hurt its business, it came out with a better transmitter developed by Thomas Edison, went into competition with Bell. Dozens of independent telephone companies sprang up, creating what one observer called "a state of enthusiastic uncertainty...
...Bell's Napoleon. The man who put the stripling Bell system out ahead-and assured it of staying there-was Theodore N. Vail, a onetime Western Union telegrapher and Government mail superintendent who became general manager of the new Bell Telephone Co. when it was founded in 1878, later became president of A. T. & T. Vail won the biggest battle in the patent wars by proving that his old employer, Western Union, was infringing on Bell's invention, and forcing Western Union out of the telephone business. As the Bell interests developed through several companies, they bought Western...
...newspapers of his day hailed Vail as "the Napoleon of communications." He envisioned a huge interconnecting system of telephones-and set out to create it. He swept all the Bell interests into one company, gobbled up faltering independents. He kept control by buying up stock in the operating companies, held onto all long-distance lines, and continued the company's early practice of licensing all services-the framework under which A. T. & T. still operates...
...Strowger made one of the greatest contributions. Strowger was convinced that a competitor was bribing the operator, trying to beat him out of business by snatching death calls intended for him. To eliminate the operator, Strowger invented the first, crude dial system, set up his own company after a Bell official turned down his system. Not till the independents had widely installed the dial did A. T. & T. go along. Many people protested the move. When dial phones were installed in the Capitol in 1930, Senator Carter Glass even tried, unsuccessfully, to push through a resolution to ban dials. Said...