HISTORY OF ITT

From the inside of the back cover of a 1934 issue of Electrical Communication,  ITT's manufacturing companies included at that time:-

  • Bell Telephone Manufacturing Co, Antwerp, (branches Brussels, Berne and The Hague)
  • China Electric Co. Ltd. Shanghai (branches Canton, Hankow, Hongkong,
    Peiping, Tienstsin)
  • Nippon Denki Kabkushiki Kaisha, Tokyo (branches Osaka, Dairen, Taihoju)
  • Compañía Standard Electric Argentina, Buenos Aires
  • Le Matériel Télephonique, Paris (with a branch in Rabat, Morocco)
  • Ferdinand Schuchardt, Berliner Fernsprech und Telegraphenwerk AG, Berlin
  • Standard Electric Aktieselskab, Copenhagen
  • Standard Telefon  og Kabelfabrik AS. Oslo
  • Standard Electric Company w Polsce Sp. z. O. O. (Warsaw)
  • Standard Electric Doms a Spolecnost, Prague (Branch at Bratislava)
  • Standard Electric Romana S A, Bucarest
  • Standard Eléctrica S.A., Madrid (branches at Barcelona, Santander)
  •  Standard Eléctrica S.A., Lisbon
  • International Standard Electric Corporation, Branch office Rio de Janeiro
  • Standard Elettrica Italiana, Milan (branch at Rome)
  • Standard Telephones and Cables, Ltd, London (branches in Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Dublin, Cairo, Johannesburg, Calcutta  and Singapore)
  • Standard Telephones and Cables (Australasia) Ltd., Sydney (branches at Melbourne, Wellington)
  • Sumitomo Electric Wire and Cable Works, Ltd., Osaka
  • Verinigte Telephon und Telegraphenfabriks AG, Czeija, Nissl and Co., Vienna

''With sales offices and Agencies Throughout the World''

...in the USA

In 1951 the ITT corporation purchased a majority interest in the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply company (founded 1897) and bought the remaining shares the next year.

In just a few years after the buyout, ITT changed the name from Kellogg Switchboard & Supply CO to ITT Kellogg. Then, after merging Federal Telephone and Radio Corporation, its separate telephone manufacturing company in Clifton, NJ. into ITT Kellogg and combining manufacturing operations into its Cicero Ave. facility in Chicago, the name was changed again to ITT Telecommunications.

ITT purchased control of Kellogg in 1951. In 1952 minority shares were purchased and Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Co became a wholly-owned subsidiary of ITT. It ceased being a separate corporation becoming an ITT Division. The last change to ITT Telecommunications had taken place by 1963.

In 1989, ITT sold its entire worldwide telecommunications products business to Alcatel and withdrew totally from this business. In 1992 Alcatel sold what had formerly been ITT’s customer premises equipment (CPE) business in the US, including its factory in Corinth, MS. to a group of private investors headed by David Lee. Initially after purchasing this business from Alcatel, this new company was known as Cortelco Kellogg. It continues to manufacture and market what had formerly been ITT’s U.S.-made telephones and related products. The name “Kellogg” has since been dropped from its name and the company is now known as Cortelco. For a short while Cortelco continued to use the ITT name and trademark on its products under a license from ITT, but this also has been discontinued.

Roger Conklin, June 2001.

..in Spain and South America

ITT signed its concession contract with the government of Spain to establish and operate a national system in that country.  That was on August 29, 1924.  It was a 20 year agreement that provided for the right of the Spanish government to purchase the system at the end of its term.  Over these 20 years the system grew from 80,000 to 406,513 subscribers in spite of the fact that civil war broke out in 1936 and WW II raged from 1939 to 1945.  These war years were times of virtually no expansion. There were held orders for some 136,500 new subscribers in 1945, after the end of WWII  when the government of Spain, under the terms of the original concession agreement, purchased CTNE - Compañia Telefonica Nacional de España from ITT.

It is interesting to note that Telefonica, now a private company,  today also owns the telephone companies in Argentina, Chile and Peru that were once owned and operated by ITT, and for a brief period of about 3 years, until about a year ago, also owned what had once been ITT's Companhia Telefonica Nacional in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. (This latter company was sold by Telefonica under the terms of its agreement with the government of Brazil when it acquired from the government the much larger telephone company serving the state of Sao Paulo.)

Roger Conklin, November 2001.

John Moynihan quoted:
"From my early days with ITT, I recall being told that during the civil war in Spain, it was possible to make telephone calls back and forth between both sides with very few problems.  This was a testimony to the excellent telephone system that existed at that time.   Sothenes Behn, founder, chairman and president of ITT, was the master diplomat.  He was pretty good at picking the winners as is evidenced by the dinner he hosted, mentioned in the passage below.

"General Goriev said by many to be the real commander in Madrid was also established in the ministry.  One of his officers, Colonel Voronov, controlled the artillery...............He & his Spanish counterpart established their observation post at the top of the Telefonica, a building which attracted more Nationalist artillery fire than any other. Ironically, this skyscraper belonging to ITT became the symbol of left wing resistance during the course of the battle.  Downstairs its chairman, Sosthenes Benn, entertained journalists with brandy while awaiting the arrival of General Franco.  And according to Hitler's interpreter, Paul Schmidt, he had prepared a banquet to greet the conquerors."

Ref:  Beevor A., The Spanish Civil War, London, 1982 pp135,6.

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