Before AT&T was broken up in 1984 by court order, the Bell System referred to AT&T and all the Bell Telephone companies that were part of it, but had separate names to provide a regional flavor.

Narrator] It's a more affectionate term for the Bell System. It was the dominant telephone provider in the US for most of the 20th century. You may know Bell by another name, American Telephone ...

[Evan]’s introduction to exploring the phone system started from a misdialed number ... as being very different from the normal Ma Bell messages — this one was almost sultry.

He oversaw the building of the first American coast to coast telephone system,and it was his dedication to basic science that initiated a new research arm for AT&T: Bell Labs. Vail was born on ...

Bell Labs began in 1925 as the Bell Telephone Laboratories, a science and communication research arm of the Bell system with ownership evenly split between AT&T and Western Electric. It celebrates ...