If the automobile is emblematic of mankind’s innate desire for autonomy and independence, the phone represents our powerful need to connect with one another. Combine these two seemingly diametrically ...

Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part 1: Industrial design takes root -- Alexander Graham Bell's telephone in a box -- An unexpected configuration change -- Rapid domestication -- Part 2: A 20-year ...

As the iconic Bell Labs marks 100 years in 2025 as a research arm of former communications giants AT&T and Bell Telephone System, it has a historic, corporate tie-in to the Lehigh Valley: Allentown’s ...

During a study of evolving telephone designs for our new book, my coauthor Russell A. Flinchum and I came across two of Pratt’s distinguished alumni who had connections to the Bell Telephone System.

AT&T Inc. said Sunday it will acquire smaller rival BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion in stock, in a deal that goes a long way toward resurrecting the old Ma Bell telephone system. The deal would ...

Over the course of the 20th century, AT&T's operating companies replaced telephone operators with mechanical switching and dial telephones. Yet it took AT&T 30 years from the invention of the ...

The building that stands at 140 New Montgomery was built in 1925 for the Pacific Telephone Company, part of the Bell System. It was, at the time, the first significant skyscraper in San Francisco, as ...

When Sioux Falls’ telephone system was first established in 1882, the numbering system began at 1 and went up from there. It was a simple process in which each new subscriber would get the next ...