The Bell System was the system of companies, led by the American Bell Telephone Company and subsequently by AT&T, which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the system was broken up into independent companies by a U.S. Justice Department mandate.
The colloquial term Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell") was often used by the general public in the United States to refer to any aspect of this conglomerate, as it held a near complete monopoly over all telephone service in most areas of the country, and is still used by many to refer to any telephone company. Ma Bell is also used to refer to the various female voices behind recordings for the Bell System: Mary Moore, Jane Barbe, and Pat Fleet (the current voice of AT&T).
Read more about Bell System: History, Present-day Usage of The Bell Name, Subsidiaries, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words bell and/or system:
“The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,
To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell;
God’s bell has claimed them by the little cry
Of their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Intimately concerned as we are with the system of Europe, it does not follow that we are therefore called upon to mix ourselves on every occasion, with a restless and meddling activity, in the concerns of the nations which surround us.”
—George Canning (1770–1827)