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Gifford retired in 1948, and Leroy A. Wilson became president. His first task was to push a rate increase past government regulators. He got one in 1949 that helped AT&T sell more stock to raise needed capital. As an outgrowth of the 1930s FCC investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in 1949, seeking to split Western Electric from AT&T. AT&T succeeded in delaying the case until the Eisenhower administration, which was not as interested in regulation, took power. In the meantime, the government talked Western Electric into taking over the management of an advanced weapons research laboratory. It formed Sandia Corp. in 1949 to do so. In the 1950s, Western Electric worked on the Nike antiaircraft missiles, making $112.5 million on the venture. Western and Bell Labs worked with others on a huge air-defense radar system. These defense projects gave AT&T a powerful lever against the antitrust suit. In a consent decree in 1956, AT&T agreed to limit its business to providing common-carrier services and to limit Western Electric's to providing equipment for the Bell System, except for government contracts. The antitrust case was settled on this basis.
In 1951, Wilson died and Cleo Craig became president. In the next few years, AT&T made it possible to dial directly to other cities without using an operator. This and ensuing developments enabled long-distance charges to be repeatedly reduced. In 1955, AT&T laid the first transatlantic telephone cable, jointly owned with the British Post Office and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation. Craig retired in 1956, and Frederick R. Kappel became president.
AT&T was in enviable financial shape by the late 1950s, although some accused it of getting there by overcharging subscribers. The booming U.S. economy led to unprecedented calling volumes, particularly from teenagers, many of whom were getting their own telephones. Telephones moved from shared party lines to private lines, and telephone services like weather and time announcements became widespread, adding further revenue. AT&T split its stock three-for-one in 1959 and two-for-one in 1964. By 1966, AT&T had three million stockholders and nearly one million employees. In 1954, AT&T began offering telephones in colors other than black. In 1961, it developed Centrex, a system in which an office maintained its own automatic switching exchange; in 1963, it offered the first Touch-Tone service; and in 1968, it brought out the Trimline phone, with the dial built into the handset. By 1965, the Bell System served 85 percent of all households in the areas in which it operated, compared with 50 percent in 1945, and was providing a vast array of services at a variety of rates.
AT&T formed Bellcom to supply most of the communications and guidance systems for the U.S. space program from 1958 to 1969. Bell Labs worked intensively on satellite communications, and the first AT&T satellite, Telstar, was launched in 1962. Comsat, a half-public, half-private company handling U.S. satellite communications, was founded in 1962, with AT&T owning 27.5 percent at a cost of $58 million.
http://www.answers.com/topic/at-t-corporation
1946: First National AT&T Agreement
When the war ended in August 1945, the wages of telephone workers remained below those of many industries. Contract negotiations stalled and the presidents of the NFTW affiliates authorized the Union's Executive Board to call a nationwide strike at 6:00 a.m., March 7, 1946. In the early morning hours of March 7, workers around the country prepared to walk the picket lines.
At 5:30 a.m., after 20 hours of bargaining, NFTW President Joseph Beirne and Cleo Craig, AT&T Vice-President in charge of negotiations, signed the Beirne-Craig memorandum. A strike had been avoided and for the first time in history, AT&T had negotiated a national agreement with the Union and committed its associated companies to that agreement.
While a major victory was won in the 1946 negotiations, the basic weakness of the NFTW had revealed itself: During negotiations, 34 of 51 affiliated unions broke away and signed separate agreements.
1947: The Strike That Brought an End to the NFTW
This weakness in the NFTW structure was exposed with devastating consequences in the 1947 strike. In 1946, AT&T was not prepared for a strike. But in 1947, AT&T was not only prepared for a strike, it forced NFTW into strike action.
AT&T was determined not to repeat the Beirne-Craig type of national settlement. It flatly refused to bargain on an industry-wide basis. AT&T approached bargaining with a divide and conquer strategy. The company did not make a wage offer until three weeks into the strike and made the offer contingent upon the affiliates agreeing not to clear it with NFTW's policy committee. Five weeks after the strike began, 17 contracts had been signed. The strike collapsed and the NFTW was finished.
NFTW President Beirne summed up events by saying: "We were trying to make a federation of union do the job which can only be done by one union in the telephone industry."
http://www.cwa-union.org/about/historical-timeline.html
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