Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and the company AT&T is a direct descendant of his original telephone company.

AT&T Actually had a total monopoly on telecommunications in the United States until 1982 when they were broken up in an antitrust lawsuit because of some fucked up abuse they were doing related to how they owned not just all the telephone lines but also the company that makes telephones.

AT&T was broken up into many smaller companies which... all slowly merged back together again

@shel Except the new AT&T can hardly claim to have a monopoly now. Not all of the former pieces of AT&T merged back into AT&T; some merged into Verizon (I think). AT&T actually does not even make telephones now, unless I am missing something (if anything that was spun off to Lucent).