This non-commercial website was originally founded and created by David Massey to help keep the memories of the Bell
System alive and to pay tribute to those that made it the greatest
telecommunications system on earth. This website also provides some
technical and corporate historical information relating to Bell Labs, Western
Electric, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), and the Regional Bell
Operating Companies. There is also some limited technical information on
Western Electric telephones for telephone collectors, hobbyists, students, and
others for non-commercial use. We are not
associated with any of the former Bell System companies (see disclaimer on the
home page.)
David Massey started this site back in 1997 on a Geocities free web
server account with less than a megabyte of files. Before this site had
its current domain name, it had been sponsored by various individuals on their
domains. In the summer of 2002 it became financially feasible to
obtain a stand-alone domain name and web hosting service. The domain name "bellsystemmemorial.com"
became its new home on the Internet and has grown to over 600 megabytes.
In September 2006, Bell System Memorial became a part of The
Porticus Centre, a non-profit entity that is dedicated to the preservation and
archiving of historical business documentation for select companies. As of
December 2022, Bell System Memorial became part of a new entity called 'AGB
1847, Inc.' which was created specifically to manage the archives of The Bell
System Memorial. We specialize
in archiving, preserving, and restoring historical artifacts from the Bell
System era:
Phone equipment
Teletype devices, specifically units manufactured in the
1980's pre Divestiture, and post divestiture AT&T
Bell employee news magazines for all operating companies
within the Bell System
Flags, stationery items, signs
Annual reports from AT&T and operating companies within the
Bell System
Photographs
The Bell Symbol and name are jointly registered trademarks of
Cincinnati Bell Inc.,
Verizon Trademark Services LLC,
AT&T Intellectual Property LLC,
CenturyLink Communications, LLC, in the U.S.A., and are used here
for historical archive references only. This web site is not affiliated
with, owned by, or otherwise associated with any of the
Regional Bell Operating
Companies,
AT&T,
Lucent,
Bell Labs,
Westrex (formerly Western
Electric), or any other telecommunications company. We do, on occasion
collaborate with the various phone companies on research, and in
other instances where our rich historical information is used for educational
purposes. The only other original phone company that still actively uses
the Bell name publicly is
Bell Canada, and is registered through
the
Canadian Intellectual Property Office.
We do accept monetary donations and membership dues to this
site to help support our historical preservation activities. These funds
are used to purchase printed documents, physical equipment and materials
associated with the Bell System.
