NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American English-language commercial terrestrial television network, a flagship property of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles and Philadelphia; the network is one of the Big Three television networks. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting, it became the network's official emblem in 1979. Founded in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America, NBC is the oldest major broadcast network in the United States. At that time the parent company of RCA was General Electric. In 1930, GE was forced to sell the companies as a result of antitrust charges. In 1986, control of NBC passed back to General Electric through its $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. Following the acquisition by GE, Bob Wright served as chief executive officer of NBC, remaining in that position until his retirement in 2007, when he was succeeded by Jeff Zucker.
In 2003, French media company Vivendi merged its entertainment assets with GE, forming NBC Universal. Comcast purchased a controlling interest in the company in 2011, acquired General Electric's remaining stake in 2013. Following the Comcast merger, Zucker left NBCUniversal and was replaced as CEO by Comcast executive Steve Burke. NBC has thirteen owned-and-operated stations and nearly 200 affiliates throughout the United States and its territories, some of which are available in Canada and/or Mexico via pay-television providers or in border areas over-the-air. During a period of early broadcast business consolidation, radio manufacturer Radio Corporation of America acquired New York City radio station WEAF from American Telephone & Telegraph. Westinghouse, a shareholder in RCA, had a competing outlet in Newark, New Jersey pioneer station WJZ, which served as the flagship for a loosely structured network; this station was transferred from Westinghouse to RCA in 1923, moved to New York City. WEAF acted as a laboratory for AT&T's manufacturing and supply outlet Western Electric, whose products included transmitters and antennas.
The Bell System, AT&T's telephone utility, was developing technologies to transmit voice- and music-grade audio over short and long distances, using both wireless and wired methods. The 1922 creation of WEAF offered a research-and-development center for those activities. WEAF maintained a regular schedule of radio programs, including some of the first commercially sponsored programs, was an immediate success. In an early example of "chain" or "networking" broadcasting, the station linked with Outlet Company-owned WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island. C. WCAP. New parent RCA saw an advantage in sharing programming, after getting a license for radio station WRC in Washington, D. C. in 1923, attempted to transmit audio between cities via low-quality telegraph lines. AT&T refused outside companies access to its high-quality phone lines; the early effort fared poorly, since the uninsulated telegraph lines were susceptible to atmospheric and other electrical interference. In 1925, AT&T decided that WEAF and its embryonic network were incompatible with the company's primary goal of providing a telephone service.
AT&T offered to sell the station to RCA in a deal that included the right to lease AT&T's phone lines for network transmission. RCA spent $1 million to purchase WEAF and Washington sister station WCAP, shut down the latter station, merged its facilities with surviving station WRC; the division's ownership was split among RCA, its founding corporate parent General Electric and Westinghouse. NBC started broadcasting on November 15, 1926. WEAF and WJZ, the flagships of the two earlier networks, were operated side-by-side for about a year as part of the new NBC. On January 1, 1927, NBC formally divided their respective marketing strategies: the "Red Network" offered commercially sponsored entertainment and music programming. Various histories of NBC suggest the color designations for the two networks came from the color of the pushpins NBC engineers used to designate affiliate stations of WEAF and WJZ, or from the use of double-ended red and blue colored pencils. On April 5, 1927, NBC expanded to the West Coast with the launch of the NBC Orange Network known as the Pacific Coast Network.
This was followed by the debut of the NBC Gold Network known as the Pacific Gold Network, on October 18, 1931. The Orange Network carried Red Network programming, the Gold Network carried programming from the Blue Network; the Orange Network recreated Eastern Red Network programming for West Coast stations at KPO in San Francisco. In 1936, the Orange Network affiliate stations became part of the Red Network, at the same time the Gold Network became part of the Blue Network. In the 1930s, NBC developed a network for shortwave radio stations, called the NBC White Network. In 1927, NBC moved its operations to 711 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, occupying the upper floors of a building de
STS-61-B
STS-61-B was NASA's 23rd Space Shuttle mission, its second using Space Shuttle Atlantis. The shuttle was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 26 November 1985. During STS-61-B, the shuttle crew deployed three communications satellites, tested techniques of constructing structures in orbit. Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, at 16:33 EST on 3 December 1985, after 6 days and 21 hours in orbit. STS-61-B marked the quickest turnaround of a Shuttle orbiter from launch to launch in history – just 54 days elapsed between Atlantis' launch on STS-51-J and launch on STS-61-B; the mission was notable for carrying the first and until today only Mexican astronaut, Rodolfo Neri Vela. This was Atlantis' second and final mission to launch before the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, which would ground the shuttle fleet for two and a half years. After landing at the Edwards Air Force Base at the end of STS-51-J on 7 October 1985, Atlantis returned to the Kennedy Space Center on 12 October.
The shuttle was moved directly into an Orbiter Processing Facility, where post-flight de-servicing and pre-flight processing took place simultaneously. After only 26 days in the OPF, a record fast processing in the history of the Space Shuttle program, the shuttle was rolled to the Vehicle Assembly Building on 7 November. Atlantis was mated with the External Tank and Solid Rocket Booster stack and was rolled out to launch pad 39A on 12 November 1985. Three satellites were deployed during the mission: Aussat 2, Morelos II, Satcom K2; the first two were the second in their series, the first examples having been deployed during STS-51-I and STS-51-G. Both were Hughes HS-376 satellites equipped with a PAM-D booster to reach geosynchronous transfer orbit. Satcom K2, was a version of the RCA 4000 series. RCA American Communications operated the satellite system of which Satcom K2 was a part; the satellite was deployed using a PAM-D2 booster, a larger version of the PAM-D. This was the first flight of this booster stage on a Space Shuttle.
All three satellites were deployed, one at a time, their booster stages fired automatically to lift them to geosynchronous transfer orbits. Their respective owners assumed charge, fired the onboard kickmotors at apogee, to circularize the orbits and align them with the equator. Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System Diffusive Mixing of Organic Solutions Morelos Payload Specialist Experiments and Orbiter Experiments A checkered racing flag was carried onboard Atlantis during STS-61-B; this was the second test flight of the OEX advanced autopilot. It ran for 65 hours and demonstrated the ability to fly the orbiter on nose jets only, aft jets only, to automatically stationkeep on another satellite and to fly an orbit with zero aerodynamic drag. THE OEX autopilot was more fuel efficient than the baseline system. Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Pad A of Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center at 19:29 pm EST on 26 November 1985; the launch marked the second night launch of the Space Shuttle program, the ninth and final flight of 1985.
A key element of the mission's objectives was EASE/ACCESS, an experiment in assembling large structures in space. EASE/ACCESS was a joint venture between the Langley Research Center and the Marshall Space Flight Center. ACCESS was a "high-rise" tower composed of nodes. EASE was a geometric structure shaped like an inverted pyramid, composed of a few large beams and nodes. Together, they demonstrated the feasibility of assembling large pre-formed structures in space. Astronauts Jerry Ross and Sherwood Spring performed the two spacewalks of the mission which marked the 50th and 51st U. S. EVAs. An IMAX camera mounted in the cargo bay filmed the activities of the astronauts engaged in the EASE/ACCESS work, as well as other scenes of interest. "This is not the preferred way of building a space station," Ross said of EASE. The astronauts reported that the most difficult part of the spacewalks was torquing their own masses while holding the EASE beams; the ACCESS worked well. The astronauts judged that performing six-hour spacewalks every other day over a five or six-day period was feasible, recommended glove changes to reduce hand fatigue.
Ross said in the Extra-Vehicular Activity debrief that the crew had tried to have the Manned Maneuvering Unit manifested for use in the second spacewalk, because "for certain applications it would be useful. In particular if you were building portions of a space station attached to the orbiter moving those portions farther than the manipulator arm could transport them." He added that the MMU could be used to attach cable runs and instruments in places out of reach of the shuttle's robotic arm. During the mission, astronaut Rodolfo Neri Vela accomplished a series of experiments related to human physiology, he photographed Mexico and Mexico City as part of the mission's Earth observations. Astronaut Charles Walker again operated the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System, the third flight of this larger and improved equipment, to produce commercial pharmaceutical products in microgravity. An experiment in Diffusive Mixing of Organic Solutions, or DMOS, was conducted for 3M; the object of this experiment was to grow single crystals that were larger and more pure than any that could be grown on Earth.
One Getaway Special canister stored in Atlantis' payload bay carried a Canadian student experiment
TBS (U.S. TV channel)
TBS is an American subscription television network, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System unit of AT&T-controlled WarnerMedia. It carries a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy, along with some sports events, including Major League Baseball and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament; as of September 2018, TBS was received by 90.391 million households that subscribe to a pay television service throughout the United States. TBS was established on December 17, 1976 as the national feed of Turner's Atlanta, independent television station, WTCG; the decision to begin offering WTCG via satellite transmission to cable and satellite subscribers throughout the United States expanded the small station into the first nationally distributed "superstation". With the assignment of WTBS as the broadcast station's call letters in 1979, the national feed became known as SuperStation WTBS, SuperStation TBS, TBS Superstation, or TBS; the channel broadcast a variety of programming during this era, including films, syndicated series, sports.
WTBS maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the national feed, aside from FCC-mandated public affairs and educational programming that only aired on the local signal. By the early 2000s, TBS had begun to focus more intensively on comedic programming, including sitcoms and other series. On October 1, 2007, TBS was converted by Turner into a conventional basic cable network, at which time it began to be carried within the Atlanta market on area cable providers alongside its existing local carriage on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network; the former parent station in Atlanta was concurrently relaunched as WPCH and reformatted as a traditional independent station with a separate schedule catering to the Atlanta market. TBS originated as a terrestrial television station in Atlanta, Georgia that began operating on UHF channel 17 on September 1, 1967, under the WJRJ-TV call letters; that station – which its original parent filed to transmit UHF channel 46, before modifying it to assign channel 17 as its frequency in February 1966 – was founded by Rice Broadcasting Inc..
Under Rice, WJRJ – the first independent station to begin operation in the Atlanta market since WQXI-TV ceased operations on May 31, 1955 – operated on a shoestring budget, general entertainment format with a schedule consisting of a few off-network reruns and older feature films as well as a 15-minute news program. In July 1969, Rice Broadcasting reached an agreement to merge with the Turner Communications Corporation – an Atlanta-based group owned by entrepreneur Robert E. "Ted" Turner III, who ran his late father's billboard advertising business and had expanded his interests to include radio stations in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Under the sale terms, Rice would acquire Turner in an exchange of stock and adopt the Turner Communications name; the Federal Communications Commission granted approval of the acquisition on December 10, 1969, giving Turner its first television property. Soon after Turner received approval of its purchase of WJRJ-TV in January 1970, Turner changed the station's call letters to WTCG.
The sale was formally completed four months on April 6, at which time Turner was assigned as licensee of WJRJ-TV. The channel 17 transmitter was located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest, with the antenna located on a large self-supporting tower; the building at this site was once home to the studios of CBS affiliate WAGA-TV and channel 17, during its first three years as WJRJ-TV. Soon after being purchased by Turner, the station moved to new studio facilities a few blocks west at the former site of the Progressive Club, after having had offices on Williams Street, across Interstate 75/85. Beginning in the early 1970s, WTCG was relayed by microwave link to many areas of the Southeastern United States through cable television providers which picked up the UHF signal off-air and microwaved the signal back to their headends. Early programming included movies from the 1930s and 1940s, Japanese animated series; the station carried sports, such as Atlanta Braves baseball, Atlanta Hawks basketball, Atlanta Flames hockey, Georgia
Atlas II
Atlas II was a member of the Atlas family of launch vehicles, which evolved from the successful Atlas missile program of the 1950s. It was designed to launch payloads into low earth orbit, geosynchronous transfer orbit or geosynchronous orbit. Sixty-three launches of the Atlas II, IIA and IIAS models were carried out between 1991 and 2004; the Atlas line was continued by the Atlas III, used between 2000 and 2005, the Atlas V, still in use. Atlas II provided higher performance than the earlier Atlas I by using engines with greater thrust and longer fuel tanks for both stages. LR-89 and LR-105 were replaced by the RS-56, derived from the RS-27; the total thrust capability of the Atlas II of 490,000 pounds force enabled the booster to lift payloads of 6,100 pounds into geosynchronous transfer orbit of 22,000 miles or more. Atlas II was the last Atlas to use a three engine, "stage-and-a-half" design: two of its three engines were jettisoned during ascent, but its fuel tanks and other structural elements were retained.
The two booster engines, RS-56-OBAs, were integrated into a single unit called the MA-5A and shared a common gas generator. They burned for 164 seconds before being jettisoned; the central sustainer engine, an RS-56-OSA, would burn for an additional 125 seconds. The Vernier engines on the first stage of the Atlas I were replaced by a hydrazine fueled roll control system; this series used an improved Centaur upper stage, the world’s first cryogenic propellant stage, to increase its payload capability. Atlas II had lower-cost electronics, an improved flight computer and longer propellant tanks than its predecessor, Atlas I; the original Atlas II was based on its predecessors. This version flew between 1991 and 1998. Atlas IIA was a derivative designed to service the commercial launch market; the main improvement was the switch from the RL10A-3-3A to RL10A-4 engine on the Centaur upper stage. The IIA version flew between 1992 and 2002. Atlas IIAS was identical to IIA, but added four Castor 4A solid rocket boosters to increase performance.
These boosters were ignited in pairs, with one pair igniting on the ground, the second igniting in the air shortly after the first pair separated. The half-stage booster section would drop off as usual. IIAS was used between 1993 and 2004, concurrently with IIA. In May 1988, the Air Force chose General Dynamics to develop the Atlas II vehicle to launch Defense Satellite Communications System payloads and for commercial users as a result of Atlas I launch failures in the late 1980s. Led by lead engineer Samuel Wagner, the Atlas II was crucial to the continued development of the United States' space program. Atlas IIs were launched from Fla. by the 45th Space Wing. The final West Coast Atlas II launch was accomplished December 2003 by the 30th Space Wing, Vandenberg AFB, California. General CharacteristicsPrimary function: Launch vehicle Primary contractor: Lockheed Martin - airframe, avionics and systems integration Principal subcontractors: Rocketdyne.
General Electric
General Electric Company is an American multinational conglomerate incorporated in New York and headquartered in Boston. As of 2018, the company operates through the following segments: aviation, power, renewable energy, digital industry, additive manufacturing, venture capital and finance and oil and gas. In 2018, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 18th-largest firm in the U. S. by gross revenue. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th-most profitable company but has since severely underperformed the market as its profitability collapsed. Two employees of GE—Irving Langmuir and Ivar Giaever —have been awarded the Nobel Prize. During 1889, Thomas Edison had business interests in many electricity-related companies including Edison Lamp Company, a lamp manufacturer in East Newark, New Jersey. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family for Edison's lighting experiments. In 1889, Morgan & Co. a company founded by J. P. Morgan and Anthony J. Drexel, financed Edison's research and helped merge those companies under one corporation to form Edison General Electric Company, incorporated in New York on April 24, 1889.
The new company acquired Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company in the same year. In 1880, Gerald Waldo Hart formed the American Electric Company of New Britain, which merged a few years with Thomson-Houston Electric Company, led by Charles Coffin. In 1887, Hart left to become superintendent of the Edison Electric Company of Missouri. General Electric was formed through the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, with the support of Drexel, Morgan & Co. Both plants continue to operate under the GE banner to this day; the company was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant used as headquarters for many years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electric's Canadian counterpart, Canadian General Electric, was formed. In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average, where it remained a part of the index for 122 years, though not continuously.
In 1911, General Electric absorbed the National Electric Lamp Association into its lighting business. GE established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in Ohio; the lighting division has since remained in the same location. Owen D. Young, through GE, founded the Radio Corporation of America in 1919, after purchasing the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, he aimed to expand international radio communications. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales. In 1926, RCA co-founded the National Broadcasting Company, which built two radio broadcasting networks. In 1930, General Electric was charged with antitrust violations and decided to divest itself of RCA. In 1927, Ernst Alexanderson of GE made the first demonstration of his television broadcasts at his General Electric Realty Plot home at 1132 Adams Rd, New York. On January 13, 1928, he made what was said to be the first broadcast to the public in the United States on GE's W2XAD: the pictures were picked up on 1.5 square inch screens in the homes of four GE executives.
The sound was broadcast on GE's WGY. Experimental television station W2XAD evolved into station WRGB which, along with WGY and WGFM, was owned and operated by General Electric until 1983. Led by Sanford Alexander Moss, GE moved into the new field of aircraft turbo superchargers. GE introduced the first set of superchargers during World War I, continued to develop them during the interwar period. Superchargers became indispensable in the years prior to World War II. GE supplied 300,000 turbo superchargers for use in bomber engines; this work led the U. S. Army Air Corps to select GE to develop the nation's first jet engine during the war; this experience, in turn, made GE a natural selection to develop the Whittle W.1 jet engine, demonstrated in the United States in 1941. GE was ranked ninth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. Although, their early work with Whittle's designs was handed to Allison Engine Company. GE Aviation emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers, bypassing the British company, Rolls-Royce plc.
Some consumers boycotted GE light bulbs and other products during the 1980s and 1990s. The purpose of the boycott was to protest against GE's role in nuclear weapons production. In 2002, GE acquired the wind power assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings. Enron Wind was the only surviving U. S. manufacturer of large wind turbines at the time, GE increased engineering and supplies for the Wind Division and doubled the annual sales to $1.2 billion in 2003. It acquired ScanWind in 2009. In 2015, GE Power garnered press attention when a model 9FB gas turbine in Texas was shut down for two months due to the break of a turbine blade; this model uses similar blade technology to GE's newest and most efficient model, the 9HA. After the break, GE developed heat treatment methods. Gas turbines represent a significant portion of GE Power's revenue, represent a significant portion of the power generation fleet of several utility companies in the United States. Chubu Electric of Japan and Électricité de France had units that were impacted.
GE di
Space Shuttle Atlantis
Space Shuttle Atlantis is a Space Shuttle orbiter vehicle belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the spaceflight and space exploration agency of the United States. Constructed by the Rockwell International company in Southern California and delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in Eastern Florida in April 1985, Atlantis is the fourth operational and the second-to-last Space Shuttle built, its maiden flight was STS-51-J from 3 to 7 October 1985. Atlantis embarked on its 33rd and final mission the final mission of a space shuttle, STS-135, on 8 July 2011. STS-134 by Endeavour was expected to be the final flight before STS-135 was authorized in October 2010. STS-135 took advantage of the processing for the STS-335 Launch On Need mission that would have been necessary if STS-134's crew became stranded in orbit. Atlantis landed for the final time at the Kennedy Space Center on 21 July 2011. By the end of its final mission, Atlantis had orbited the Earth a total of 4,848 times, traveling nearly 126,000,000 mi or more than 525 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Atlantis is named after RV Atlantis, a two-masted sailing ship that operated as the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1930 to 1966. Weight: 151,315 pounds Length: 122.17 feet Height: 56.58 feet Wingspan: 78.06 feet Atlantis was completed in about half the time it took to build Space Shuttle Columbia. When it rolled out of the Palmdale assembly plant, weighing 151,315 lb, Atlantis was nearly 3.5 short tons lighter than Columbia. Atlantis is the lightest shuttle of the remaining fleet, weighing 20,685 pounds less than the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off on its maiden voyage on 3 October 1985, on mission STS-51-J, the second dedicated Department of Defense flight, it flew one other mission, STS-61-B, the second night launch in the shuttle program, before the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster temporarily grounded the Shuttle fleet in 1986. Among the five Space Shuttles flown into space, Atlantis conducted a subsequent mission in the shortest time after the previous mission when it launched in November 1985 on STS-61-B, only 50 days after its previous mission, STS-51-J in October 1985.
Atlantis was used for ten flights between 1988 and 1992. Two of these, both flown in 1989, deployed the planetary probes Magellan to Venus and Galileo to Jupiter. With STS-30 Atlantis became the first shuttle to launch an interplanetary probe. During another mission, STS-37 flown in 1991, Atlantis deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Beginning in 1995 with STS-71, Atlantis made seven straight flights to the former Russian space station Mir as part of the Shuttle-Mir Program. STS-71 marked a number of firsts in human spaceflight: 100th U. S. manned space flight. S. Shuttle-Russian Space Station Mir joint on-orbit operations; when linked and Mir together formed the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time. Shuttle Atlantis delivered several vital components for the construction of the International Space Station. During the February 2001 mission STS-98 to the ISS, Atlantis delivered the Destiny Module, the primary operating facility for U. S. research payloads aboard the ISS. The five hour 25 minute third spacewalk performed by astronauts Robert Curbeam and Thomas Jones during STS-98 marked NASA's 100th extra vehicular activity in space.
The Quest Joint Airlock, was flown and installed to the ISS by Atlantis during the mission STS-104 in July 2001. The successful installation of the airlock gave on-board space station crews the ability to stage repair and maintenance spacewalks outside the ISS using U. S. EMU or Russian Orlan space suits; the first mission flown by Atlantis after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was STS-115, conducted during September 2006. The mission carried the P3/P4 truss segments and solar arrays to the ISS. On ISS assembly flight STS-122 in February 2008, Atlantis delivered the Columbus laboratory to the ISS. Columbus laboratory is the largest single contribution to the ISS made by the European Space Agency. In May 2009 Atlantis flew a seven-member crew to the Hubble Space Telescope for its Servicing Mission 4, STS-125; the mission was a success, with the crew completing five spacewalks totalling 37 hours to install new cameras, batteries, a gyroscope and other components to the telescope. This was the final mission not to the ISS.
The longest mission flown using Atlantis was STS-117 which lasted 14 days in June 2007. During STS-117, Atlantis' crew added a new starboard truss segment and solar array pair, folded the P6 array in preparation for its relocation and performed four spacewalks. Atlantis was not equipped to take advantage of the Station-to-Shuttle Power Transfer System so missions could not be extended by making use of power provided by ISS. During the STS-129 post-flight interview on 16 November 2009, shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach said that Atlantis beat Space Shuttle Discovery for the record low amount of Interim Problem Reports, with a total of just 54 listed since returning from STS-125, he continued to add "It is due to the hardware processing. They just did a great job; the record will never be broken again in the history of the Space Shuttle Program, so congratulations to them". During the STS-132 post-launch interview on 14 May 2010, Shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach said that Atlantis beat its own previous record low amount of Interim Problem Reports, with a total of 46 listed between STS-129 and STS-132.
Atlantis went through t
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company, the second largest provider of mobile telephone services, the largest provider of fixed telephone services in the United States through AT&T Communications. Since June 14, 2018, it is the parent company of mass media conglomerate WarnerMedia, making it the world's largest media and entertainment company in terms of revenue; as of 2018, AT&T is ranked #9 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. AT&T began its history as Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, a subsidiary of the Bell Telephone Company, founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1880; the Bell Telephone Company evolved into American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885, which rebranded as AT&T Corporation. The 1982 United States v. AT&T antitrust lawsuit resulted in the divestiture of AT&T Corporation's subsidiaries or Regional Bell Operating Companies, resulting in several independent companies including Southwestern Bell Corporation.
In 2005, SBC purchased its former parent AT&T Corporation and took on its branding, with the merged entity naming itself AT&T Inc. and using its iconic logo and stock-trading symbol. In 2006, AT&T Inc. acquired BellSouth, the last independent Baby Bell company, making their joint venture Cingular Wireless wholly owned and rebranding it as AT&T Mobility. The current AT&T reconstitutes much of the former Bell System, includes ten of the original 22 Bell Operating Companies along with the original long distance division. AT&T can trace its origin back to the original Bell Telephone Company founded by Alexander Graham Bell after his patenting of the telephone. One of that company's subsidiaries was American Telephone and Telegraph Company, established in 1885, which acquired the Bell Company on December 31, 1899, for legal reasons, leaving AT&T as the main company. AT&T established a network of subsidiaries in the United States and Canada that held a government-authorized phone service monopoly, formalized with the Kingsbury Commitment, throughout most of the twentieth century.
This monopoly was known as the Bell System, during this period, AT&T was known by the nickname Ma Bell. For periods of time, the former AT&T was the world's largest phone company. In 1982, U. S. regulators broke up the AT&T monopoly, requiring AT&T to divest its regional subsidiaries and turning them each into individual companies. These new companies were known as Regional Bell Operating Companies, or more informally, Baby Bells. AT&T continued to operate long distance services, but as a result of this breakup, faced competition from new competitors such as MCI and Sprint. Southwestern Bell was one of the companies created by the breakup of AT&T Corp; the architect of divestiture for Southwestern Bell was Robert G. Pope; the company soon started a series of acquisitions. This includes the 1987 acquisition of Metromedia mobile business and the acquisition of several cable companies in the early 1990s. In the half of the 1990s, the company acquired several other telecommunications companies, including some Baby Bells, while selling its cable business.
During this time, the company changed its name to SBC Communications. By 1998, the company was in the top 15 of the Fortune 500, by 1999 the company was part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In 2005, SBC purchased AT&T for $16 billion. After this purchase, SBC adopted the better-known AT&T name and brand, with the original AT&T Corp. still existing as the long-distance landline subsidiary of the merged company. The current AT&T claims the original AT&T Corp.'s history as its own, though its corporate structure only dates from 1983. It retains SBC's pre-2005 stock price history, all regulatory filings prior to 2005 are for Southwestern Bell/SBC, not AT&T Corp. In September 2013, AT&T Inc. announced it would expand into Latin America through a collaboration with América Móvil. In December 2013, AT&T announced plans to sell its Connecticut wireline operations to Stamford-based Frontier Communications. AT&T purchased the Mexican carrier Iusacell in late 2014, two months purchased the Mexican wireless business of NII Holdings, merging the two companies to create AT&T Mexico.
In July 2015, AT&T purchased DirecTV for $48.5 billion, or $67.1 billion including assumed debt, subject to certain conditions. AT&T subsequently announced plans to converge its existing U-verse home internet and IPTV brands with DirecTV, to create AT&T Entertainment. In an effort to increase its media holdings, on October 22, 2016, AT&T announced a deal to buy Time Warner for $108.7 billion. AT&T owns a 2% stake in Canadian-domiciled entertainment company Lionsgate. On July 13, 2017, it was reported that AT&T would introduce a cloud-based DVR streaming service as part of its effort to create a unified platform across DirecTV and its DirecTV Now streaming service, with U-verse to be added soon. In October 2018, it was announced that the service Is set to launch in 2019On September 12, 2017, it was reported that AT&T planned to launch a new cable TV-like service for delivery over-the-top over its own or a competitor's broadband network sometime next year. On November 20, 2017, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim filed a lawsuit for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division to block the merger with Time Warner, saying it "will harm competition, result in higher bills for consumers and less innovation."
In order for AT&T to acquire Time Warner, the Department of Justice stated that the company must
