Bell Canada owner of several Toronto professional sports franchises. BCE ranked number 262 on the 2011 edition of the Forbes Global 2000 list. Historically, Bell Canada has been one of Canada's most important and most powerful companies and, in 1975, was listed as the fifth largest in the country. The company is named after the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who also co-founded Bell Telephone Company in Boston, Massachusetts. Bell Canada operated as the Canadian subsidiary of the Bell System from 1880 to 1975. However, unlike the other regional Bell operating companies, Bell Canada had its own research and development
History of the telephone designed and built the world's first switchboard for commercial use. Coy was inspired by Alexander Graham Bell's lecture at the Skiff Opera House in New Haven on 27 April 1877. In Bell's lecture, during which a three-way telephone connection with Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut, was demonstrated, he first discussed the idea of a telephone exchange for the conduct of business and trade. On 3 November 1877, Coy applied for and received a franchise from the Bell Telephone Company for New Haven and Middlesex Counties. Coy, along with Herrick P. Frost and Walter Lewis, who provided the capital, established the District