AT&T and the end of the bell logo

American Telephone and Telegraph was founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1885. The iconic bell logo was simplified over the years, but remained essentially the same. For a hundred years, the bell was synonomous with telephone service.

In 1982, AT&T lost the anti-trust suit the Federal government had filed against it, and the monopoly was broken up. The company was splintered into seven "Regional Bell Operating Companies" and the new AT&T which included Bell Labs. The RBOCs were frequently referred to as the Baby Bells.


The new companies were:
                       
 

To see how these eight companies (plus several later spin offs) fared in the stock market, I suggest this article by Birinyi Associates.   http://tickersense.typepad.com/ticker_sense/2006/01/1983_att_breaku.html

In the mid 1990s, the Baby Bells, apparently feeling a loss of family togetherness, started merging with each other. NYNEX was the first, bought by Bell Atlantic in 1996. Below is the logo Bell Atlantic used from 1997 until 2000, the last use of the the bell symbol.

The next year Pacific Telesis became part of SBC (the name that Southwestern Bell had taken in 1995). This is a transitional logo to get people accustomed to the name change. Eventually the words were dropped and the initials remained.
              
                                       

SBC bought Ameritech in 1999 and the old AT&T Corp. in 2005, changing its name to AT&T Inc. The new logo tweaked the AT&T globe and changed the initials to lower case. Finally, AT&T acquired Bell South in 2006.

 

In the meanwhile, Bell Atlantic bought GTE in 2000 and changed the combined companies' name to Verizon.

US West was acquired by Qwest in 2000. CenturyLink bought Qwest in 2011.