Bell Telephone Company companies and to provide further funds for expansion of its overall telephone infrastructure. On April 17, 1880, National Bell was split into the American Bell Telephone Company, led by Theodore Vail as general manager, and with the International Bell Telephone Company (IBTC) as a holding company for its international subsidiaries. IBTC's first non-North American subsidiary was the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company (BTM), established by Hubbard at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1882. The Bell System's Bell Telephone Company of Canada subsidiary, wholly owned by the National Bell, had been established two years earlier. Alexander Graham Bell's ten shares of Bell Telephone Company
Bell Telephone Company American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), at times the world's largest telephone company. The Bell Patent Association (February 27, 1875 – July 9, 1877, a name later assigned by historians), was not a corporate entity but a trusteeship and a partnership. It was established verbally in 1874 to be the holders of the patents produced by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson. Approximate one-third interests were at first held by Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a lawyer and Bell's future father-in-law; Thomas Sanders, the well-to-do leather merchant father of one of Bell's deaf students (and who was the first to