Telephone History
The Early Years 1876 - 1900
From the moment Alexander Graham Bell yelled those famous words, "Come here Mr. Watson, I want to see you!", the business of providing telephone service was off and running. Soon after that fateful day of March 10, 1876, Bell and Watson were demonstrating the instrument.
In July of 1877, the Bell Telephone Company was formed by Gardiner Hubbard. The Charles Williams shop made the first telephones under the direction ofWatson, who in effect was the Research and Development Department of the company. Alexander Graham Bell opted out of the day-to-day managing of the company and traveled to England, staying for over a year. By the end of 1877 there were three thousand telephones in service.
In mid-1878, Hubbard named Theodore Vail, the Superintendent of the Railway Mail Services as the new general manager of the Bell Company. This one decision alone would become lead to the basic foundation of what would become the giant monopoly, the "Bell System." The Bell company had 10,000 phones in service at this time.