AT&T is a special case. It held a monopoly on a near universal service across almost the entire United States for close to a century. I just can't think of any

AT&T is a special case. It held a monopoly on a near universal service across almost the entire United States for close to a century. I just can't think of any company comparable now. By the time of that first Nobel Prize in 1937, AT&T had basically had its monopoly for 30-50 years depending on exactly where you start counting, and it would continue to maintain it for nearly another 50.