The Bell Telephone Company was founded in 1877 and produced the new invention, the telephone. The first telephone exchange occurred in 1878 under license from Bell Telephone in New Haven, CT. For the first three years, telephone exchanges occurred only in major U.S. cities operating under the license of the American Bell Telephone Company. In 1882 the Western Electric Company became the manufacturing unit of American Bell. Over time, the company acquired a majority of its licensees and thus became known as the Bell System. On March 3, 1855, American Telephone and Telegraph became a wholly owned subsidiary of American Bell to build and operate the original long-distance telephone network. AT&T was initially built out of New York, followed by Chicago in 1982 and San Francisco in 1915. On December 30, 1899, AT&T acquired the assets of Bell Systems and became its parent company. Thanks to the invention of the load coil, AT&T expanded into Colorado, and following the invention of the first practical electric amplifiers in 1913, the company made internationalization possible. Bell's second patent expired in 1894...