The company was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard.

[2] Upon inception, Hubbard was installed as trustee, although he was additionally the company's de facto president, since he also controlled his daughter's shares by power of attorney.

The Bell Patent Association (February 27, 1875 – July 9, 1877, a name later assigned by historians),[8] was not a corporate entity but a trusteeship and a partnership.

Both Hubbard's and Sanders' roles in the newly born company were pivotal to its early survival and its eventual growth to become a corporate giant.

[13] Sanders for his part, a wealthy leather merchant, provided most of the financing for both Bell's research and the young company, eventually amounting to expenditures of some $110,000 "before he received any reimbursement" by the sale of his shares.

[18] IBTC's first non-North American subsidiary was the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company (BTM), established by Hubbard at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1882.

Under Forbes' leadership, a new executive committee was created at its corporate level to reorganize and run the overall company with professional management.

Exhibition judges Emperor Dom Pedro II of the Empire of Brazil and the eminent British physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) recommended his device to the Committee of Electrical Awards, which voted Bell the gold medal for Electrical Equipment, helping to propel him to international fame.

Pivotally, late in the evening moments after the main group of tired judges and newspaper reporters had quickly looked over and derided Bell's telephone display, Emperor Dom Pedro, who was straggling, entered the fair's Education Building where Bell's two displays were located.

As the main group started moving on to the next exhibit to be reviewed, Dom Pedro came upon the displays and called out to Bell in his booming voice: "What are you doing here?"

Tired and hungry, they hardly looked at the telephone, made some jokes at Bell's expense, and wanted to leave the exhibition quickly when suddenly, Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil from 1840 to 1889, with his wife Empress Theresa and a bevy of courtiers, entered the room.

Bell's telephone became the star of the centennial...."[21] "On a hot Sunday afternoon, June 25th, Sir William Thompson (later Lord Kelvin) and many other distinguished guests inspected the exhibits.

There, Dom Pedro II sought out a young, relatively obscure teacher at the School of the Deaf named Alexander Graham Bell, with whom he had exchanged letters.

[18][21][22][23][24] Bell, who was then a full-time teacher, had not planned to exhibit at the fair because of his heavy teaching schedule and preparation for his student's examinations.

He went to Philadelphia only at the stern insistence of Mabel Hubbard, his then-fiancée and future wife and who was an expert multilingual lip reader, deaf since age five.

During his tour of the continent, the Belgian government offered him the greatest financial incentives to establish his European subsidiary's headquarters in their country.

[5] BTMC then established la Compagnie Belge du Téléphone Bell (Bell Telephone Company of Belgium) in the same year as its Belgian operating subsidiary for telephone service, one of several companies that provided such service in the country, the others having evolved principally from telegraph carriers.

[29] BTMC eventually came under complete ownership by Western Electric, and also established other divisions as national companies across Continental Europe and Russia.

Significant criticism of AT&T (a monopoly) had emerged in the United States that domestic telephone system rates were higher than they needed to be, and that AT&T was using those revenues to subsidize its European operations.

Only three years earlier, Western Union had turned down Gardiner Hubbard's offer to sell it all rights to the telephone for US$100,000 (approximately $3.16 million in current dollars[31]).

In only a few years, Western Union's president would acknowledge that it was a serious business error, one that later nearly led to his company being swallowed up by the newly emerging telecommunications giant into which Bell Telephone would shortly evolve.

At each end of the memorial there are two female figures mounted on granite pedestals representing Humanity, one sending and the other receiving a message.