ITT-International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.- 100 Pieces!

Company Name: After World War I, Sosthenes Behn, a former US Army lieutenant colonel and sugar broker from the Virgin Islands, founded the International Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1920. It started out as a small operator of telephone companies in Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Virgin Islands. Behn worked out a partnership with AT&T’s Brussels-based International Western Electric and its manufacturing division. In 1925, Walter Gifford, president of AT&T, decided that AT&T and the Bell System should concentrate on universal telephone service in the US. He therefore sold the International Western Electric Co. to ITT for $33 million. ITT acquired many small foreign telephone companies, and by the end of the 1920s it was one of the two most powerful utilities on the continent. By 1930, the company was a major player not just in Latin America, but worldwide.

ITT, incorporated in Maryland, conducted general telephone, telegraph, cable, and wireless business. This included construction and operation of the communication systems and manufacture and distribution of electrical equipment in the US and its territories. It also transacted business in Cuba, Puerto Rico and other islands of the West Indies, Mexico, Central & South America, Europe, and other countries. Alcatel purchased the entire worldwide business from ITT in 1989 and sold it to a company now known as Cortelco in 1992.

Male with Communications Equipment vignette by American Bank Note. Mixed Blue and Grey colors. 100 Pieces.