Alexander Graham Bell Honors and Tributes - Corporate Namesakes

Corporate Namesakes

Further information: Bell System –Subsidiaries

The 'Bell' trademark has been used and is still in use with a variety of telephone companies in North America and around the world, including (partial list):

• Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, which since 2009 is the new name of the former Alcatel Shanghai Bell (since 2001), which was originally created as the Shanghai Bell Manufacturing Co. in 1983;
• American Bell Telephone Company, the new name of the former National Bell Telephone Company. It obtained its new name on March 20, 1880, and was then later absorbed into its own subsidiary American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) on December 30, 1899;
• Bell Atlantic Corporation, the former name of Verizon Communications Inc., which is still currently part of the Regional Bell Operating Companies;
• Bell Canada, the new name of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada;
• Bell Communications Research, or Bellcore, the name formerly used by today's Telcordia Technologies prior to 1997. The Bellcore lab was a consortium established by the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) upon their separation from AT&T in 1984;
• Bell Patent Association, technically not a corporation but a trusteeship and a partnership first established verbally in 1874 to be the holders of the patents produced by Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson. Approximately 30% interests were to be held by Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a lawyer and Bell's future father-in-law, Thomas Sanders, the well-to-do leather merchant father of one of Bell's deaf students, and finally Bell himself. The last 10% interest of the association was assigned to Bell's assistant Thomas Watson, in lieu of salary. The verbal Patent Association agreement was first formalized in a memorandum of agreement on February 27, 1875. The Patent Association's assets later became the foundation of the Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company created in July 1877 by Gardiner Hubbard;
• Bell Telephone Company founded on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard and a partner. It was renamed the National Bell Telephone Company on February 17, 1879;
• Bell Telephone Company of Canada, the forerunner of today's Bell Canada which owns its 'Bell' trademark outright in Canada;
• Bell Telephone Company of Illinois;
• Bell Telephone Company of Michigan;
• Bell Telephone Company of New Jersey;
• Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania;
• Bell Telephone Laboratories, the former name of the Bell Laboratories, the research and development arm of the Bell System, and also formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories. Bell Laboratories is now the research organization of Alcatel-Lucent;
• Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company of Belgium, created as a subsidiary of the International Bell Telephone Company in 1882, and which was sold to International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) in 1925. ITT later divested all its international telecommunication assets to Alcatel-Lucent in 1989;
• Bell System, which referred to a popular name used to described the group of companies which operated initial telephone services in the United States and Canada;
• BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Corporation, publishes telephone directories for AT&T customers served by BellSouth Telecommunications. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T founded in 1984 to undertake the operations of the Bell System Yellow Pages owned by Southern Bell and South Central Bell. BAPCO published its directories under the "Real Pages" name;
• BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc., currently part of the Regional Bell Operating Companies of AT&T, serves the southeastern United States (Alabama/Florida/Georgia/Kentucky/Louisiana/Mississippi/North Carolina/South Carolina/Southeast/Tennessee). BellSouth Telecommunications was formed on January 1, 1992 when BellSouth merged its operating companies, Southern Bell and South Central Bell, into one entity;
• Cincinnati Bell, Inc., a former independent Bell System franchise Cincinnati Bell, which was not part of the 1984 divestiture from AT&T;
• Compagnie Belge du Telephone Bell, of Antwerp, Belgium, formed in 1882 as a subsidiary of the International Bell Telephone Company;
• Edison Gower-Bell Telephone Company of Europe, Ltd., which held telephone patents for Bell, Edison and Frederic Gower (see next item below) in Europe, and was responsible for sales to all European countries outside Britain, France, Turkey and Greece;
• Gower Bell Telephone Company was a European company created by Frederic Allan Gower of the United States, who previously had a Bell franchise in New England in the early 1880s. In the UK he created a telephone of his own design, free of Bell's patents, that became the common British Post Office telephone; In 1881 Gower Bell joined with the United Telephone Company (an amalgamation of the Edison and Bell companies in London) and created the Consolidated Telephone Construction and Maintenance Co. Ltd., to manufacture telephones;
• Illinois Bell Telephone Company, operating as AT&T Illinois;
• Indiana Bell Telephone Company, Inc., operating as AT&T Indiana;
• International Bell Telephone Company, formed in 1880 to help promote Bell's business outside of North America;
• Japan Bell Telephone, as well as Japan Bell Telephone Laboratories;
• Malheur Bell, the common name of the Malheur Home Telephone Company, a rural telephone company operating in Oregon that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qwest Corporation;
• Michigan Bell Telephone Company, operating as AT&T Michigan;
• National Bell Telephone Company, the new name of the former Bell Telephone Company. It obtained its new name in March 1979, and was then later renamed to the American Bell Telephone Company in March 1880;
• Nederlandsche Bell Telefoon Maatschappij of the Netherlands, formed in 1881 as a subsidiary of the International Bell Telephone Company;
• New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, which merged with the Bell Telephone Company in 1877 to become the National Bell Telephone Company;
• New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC;
• Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, which provides services just north of the Southwestern Bell area, including: Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska;
• Nevada Bell Telephone Company, operating as AT&T Nevada;
• Ohio Bell Telephone Company, operating as AT&T Ohio;
• Oriental Bell Telephone Company of New York, which later became the Oriental Telephone Company which itself was established on January 25, 1881, as the result of an agreement between Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and the Anglo-Indian Telephone Company, Ltd.. The company was licensed to sell telephones in Greece, Turkey, South Africa, India, Japan, China, and other Asian countries;
• Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company was the name of the Bell System's telephone operations in California;
• Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company, which provides telephone service in the states of Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho;
• Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC), which after 1984 included Southwestern Bell Corporation, BellSouth Corporation, and Bell Atlantic Corporation (which later evolved into Verizon Communications Inc.), along with several other non-'Bell' companies;
• South Central Bell Telephone Company, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, was the name of the Bell System's operations in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. South Central Bell was created in July 1968 when the Bell telephone operations in those states were split off from Southern Bell;
• Southern New England Telephone, started operations on January 27, 1878 as the District Telephone Company of New Haven. It was the founder of the first telephone exchange, as well as the world's first telephone book. It currently does business as AT&T Connecticut;
• Southwestern Bell Corporation, currently part of the Regional Bell Operating Companies;
• The Telephone Company (Bell's Patents) Ltd was registered in London, England on 4 June 1878. It opened in London 21 August 1879, becoming Europe's first telephone exchange.
• Wisconsin Bell Inc., operating as AT&T Wisconsin;